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In a presentation to CENDIin December 2002, Dr. Freeman explained the need for cyberinfrastructure to enhance and revolutionize the research activities of scientists. In addition to covering the major development components of the infrastructure, he discussed several trends that are predicted to converge and dramatically change the infrastructure for science over the next 10 years. These include: the power and capacity of technology; the transformative power of computational resources for science and engineering; and the increased understanding of computation among policy makers within agencies, the Administration, and Congress. The objective of cyberinfrastructure for science and engineering is to provide an integrated environment in which all scientists can work on advanced problems. In closing, Dr. Freeman made some observations on what this infrastructure could mean for the government.
In his presentation at the December 2002 CENDI meeting, Dr. Nelson speculated on the future of cyberinfrastructure by looking at the applications and impacts of technologies. He predicted that the infrastructure of the future will be fast, everywhere, always on, intelligent, and easy to use. Computer systems will be easier to manage because they'll be so pervasive. He described cyberinfrastructure as occuring in three phases: one-to-one connectivety; one-to-many via the Web; and many-to-many (peer-to-peer) as defined by NAPSTER. However, first we must survive the current Internet by developing and using standards and allow the private sector and the market to develop. Dr. Nelson predicts that the NGI will be faster and more global in its impact and will result in a drastic cost reduction of information dissemination.
At the December 2002 CENDI meeting, Ms. Funke and Mr. Tracy updated the CENDI members on research and products under development at EPA. The Environmental Information Management System (EIMS) status update was presented by John Sykes of the Office of Research and Development (ORD). This system now has over 31,000 records and will soon be adding the Science Inventory which is all research in the agency. Also financial information is being integrated with products to provide better accountability of what a project costs. Following this update, another status report was given on "Window to My Environment", a public access portal that addresses practical problems of GIS data integration and deployment. Because there is no agreement on the Open GIS Standard, XML is being used to integrate EPA information with partner information. The last update described the Environmental Data Resistry (EDR) which supports EPA's efforts in data standardization by cumulating definitions of data elements from a variety of EPA databases, products, and projects. It utilizes the ISO 11179 standard and provides a single source for their definition. Currently there are over 7,000 data elements defined in the EDR. A chemical data registry has also been developed with approximately 80,000 chemicals.
In his presentation at the October 2002 CENDI meeting, Mr. Cooper indicated that the heart of homeland security is information collection and dissemination. Three objectives are considered essential by the Administration for homeland security: 1) integrate the federal government; 2) integrate the federal with the state, local and tribal entities; and 3) integrate the government and private sectors. A scientific and technical directorate responsible for R&D related to weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, biological and radiological) is included under the proposed legislation. Information analysis and an infrastructure for security information is a new directorate that would need to be created. Mr. Cooper reviewed DTIC's Current Focus web site and NTIS's Homeland Security Information Center and indicated that by building on existing initiatives such as these, the new directorate would achieve a faster presence. In addition to documents, geographic information systems, videos, the work of the National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI) and the National Mapping initiative are very important for homeland security information. Mr. Cooper outlined three challenges that must be achieved for disseminating homeland security information: the development of a two-way flow of information among first responders and other levels of government; the involvement of private critical infrastructure community; and keeping the average citizen engaged and informed.
The OMB/OIRA has been asked by Director Ridge to draft a definition of "sensitive homeland security information" within the existing law and policy in order to know what it is, how is it to be shared and with whom, and how long does it hold this status. In his October 2002 presentation to CENDI, Mr. Chenok indicated that this information is unclassified and that R&D results are not affected. The guidance is needed to ensure a consistent understanding of what it is and that when it is applied to individual agencies, it will be similar. The E-government Bill (Electronic Government Act of 2002) has a standards process that allows for a more systematic review of information standards, including the changing of limited distribution materials to publicly releasable.
At the April 2002 CENDI meeting, Dr. Neuman gave an overview of the new structure at the Office for Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The two advisory committees at OSTP IT are the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) and the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). PCAST an industry advisory committee has created four working groups: Counterterrorism, S&T Budget, Energy Efficiency and Economy, and 21st Century Infrastructure. The new PCAST will spend the majority of its time deliberating and making concise recommendations in bullet form with well-developed rationales. Homeland security is a current issue of concern to OSTP and understands the need for the dissemination of legitimate scientific information and national security concerns. OSTP has held discussions with DoD and NTIS regarding document classification/declassification and noted that content and control of dissemination differs by agency. OSTP has been specifically asked to address data sharing and new techniques for data mining. In closing Dr. Neuman mentioned the Information and Technology Budget CrossCut and iterated the five themes of the President's 2002 budget: simplify and integrate across the government and reduce duplication; improve management; increase the security of government information systems; eliminate redundant and unneeded IT; and establish successful e-business practices, including best practices from the private sector.
The report is based on input from six CENDI agencies regarding the issues and challenges for customer support and product development that relate to the increased use of the Internet. The impact is described by agency, with statistics provided when possible. General observations are made across the agencies and recommendations are made for future CENDI activities in this area.
Working on an interdisciplinary basis, CODATA seeks to improve the quality, reliability, processing, management and accessibility of data of importance to science and technology. The site includes information on CODATA working groups and conferences.
This paper identifies and scopes new issues in authentication and access management for sharing information across organizations, maps best-practice approaches using existing and emerging technologies to accomplish access by multiple communities, provides a common vocabulary and framework to assist in development of licensing and resource-sharing agreements, highlights technological and policy considerations, and lays the foundation for community standards.
This "index" page links to individual issues of the quarterly newsletter that provide coverage of scientific and technical electronic information, Internet, the Web, and related issues such as policy and standards, Web site development guidelines, and topical resources with S&T information content.
This five page document summarizes the discussions on building a scientific electronic archive presented during the ICSTI 1997 General Assembly. Reviews are included for each speaker's presentation. Comparisons of the print and electronic publishing environment are made. Examples of electronic publishing projects in Japan are given. Final discussion centered on national and international issues in implementing a scientific electronic archive.
ICSU is a non-governmental organization, founded in 1931 to bring together natural scientists in international scientific endeavor. The Council acts as a focus for the exchange of ideas and information and the development of standards. This site links to the conference program, committees, and summaries of invited papers for this joint conference with UNESCO. The 13 invited papers cover topics on standards, archiving, electronic publishing in developing countries, digital libraries, S&T information, copyright, data security, and economics of information.
The Internet2 project is a joint initiative of academia, government and industry to bring focus to developing a new generation of advanced applications to meet emerging academic requirements in research, teaching and learning. The I2 Homepage provides a search interface to an extensive collection of information and links that includes information about Internet2, technical information, events, news, Internet2 Press, a virtual library collection and password protected resources for members.
Web site of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Links to publications of the Association such as "Science", a Professional Network with job information, products, public relations and media material, career Forum, international program descriptions, K-12 Forum, Congressional appropriations for R&D, and Science & Policy links. Some resources are for members only such as "Science". The site provides links that highlight STI issues within the science and technology disciplines that overlap STI issues of the Federal Government such as policy, law and legislation, Congressional committees appropriations, information sharing and protection
The article describes a Web-based electronic journal publishing project and underlying concepts for electronic publishing from the Physics community. Three fundamental elements are a preprint server, a peer-reviewed and edited journal, and an electronic archive. Discusses difficulties in transitioning role of archive from libraries to publishers; product design; computer network and software tools to support the product; and cost models. This prototype explores issues in moving to Web-based systems for e-publishing.
The Office of Information Services at NIST, which supports the research activities of the NIST community, is described. The strategic plan is outlined, which calls for OIS to re-invent itself. Changes, including the introduction of a First Point of Contact Desk, are described.
The academic library situation is described in terms of the information needs of students and faculty in the engineering and physical sciences. Major issues include collection management, serial pricing, and end-user training.
The current use of sci-tech information in the specific environment of United Technologies is discussed. UTC has restructured its corporate libraries by consolidating. More information is being provided at the desktop. There is an Internet/Intranet team. Popular products among the researchers are described, along with a wish list for changes.
The STIC is described along with the changing environment within the intelligence community. STIC provides alerts on technological development that could impact national security. The outcome of a recent study on the health of S&T intelligence is reviewed.
The February 1996 joint UNESCO/ICSU conference on Electronic Publishing, recommended this follow-on workshop to address issues of practices and standards in electronic publishing. The report covers aspects such as archiving, citations, privacy, peer review, and the benefits to developing countries.
As an outcome of the AAAS/UNESCO/ICSU workshop on scientific publishing (see record 166), an international working group was created to help define "scientific publications" in the electronic environment. This is an update to the white paper prepared by the group that presents several thoughts, acknowledging the added value presented by the electronic environment.
Coverage is a wide ranging with emphasis on broader issues that shape policy for professional, scientific and/or academic publishing, both books and journals. Issues include details on Web design, server management, pricing, revenue collection and policy issues. Issue have a set of short invited contributions on a particular theme. Longer pieces covering electronic publishing from publishers and/or scholars are also be included.
This discussion paper looks at three current sites for digital information: ACM Digital Library, the Internet RFC series, and D-Lib Magazine. Implications for long-term preservation, publishers as archivists, organizational stability, copyright, technology standards, long-terms strategies, partnerships, and preservation independent of the original publisher are discussed.
This Web site serves as a forum for discussing, developing, and promoting interoperability standards that will facilitate the efficient dissemination of content. One of its initial efforts was to enhance access to e-print archives in order to improve scholarly communication. The Web site posts meeting minutes, current projects, and upcoming meetings and related events.
The website for the Center for Democracy and Technology contains information on digital authentication, bandwidth, and access to government information. Additionally, there are policy posts, press releases, testimony and speeches, and links to information on such topics as encryption, freedom of speech, privacy, and computer security.
The report provides the results of a survey of 16,029 people throughout the 15 European Union states in May and June, 2001. The opinion poll surveyed European experience and perceptions in science and technology and reports findings in such categories as information, interest, and knowledge; values, science, and technology; and levels of confidence. The Eurobarometer surveys have been utilized since 1973.
Minutes from a presentation by Dr. Ed Oliver, Associate Director for Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) at the CENDI meeting on October 3, 2000 in Germantown, MD. Budget constraints at OSTI have prevented them from taking advantage of many computer related opportunities. There is bipartisan interest in interagency collaboration and he believes that CENDI is a perfect vehicle for doing this. He feels that a direct analysis of the impact of access to information and the success of technology transfer is needed. He predicts that in the information future, computing will not be the problem because networks will be cheap. However, problems may arise as to how manage the content.
Minutes from a presentation by Monica Bradford, Managing Editor, Science Magazine at the CENDI meeting on March 14, 2000. Ms. Bradford discusses Science Magazine's project in Knowledge Environments as an attempt to serve as an intermediary between various research communities. The goal of this effort is to leverage online technologies to systematically link related material with as little human intervention as possible. The Signal Transduction Knowledge Environment (STKE) project is a cooperative effort with Highwire Press and Island Press funded by a grant from the Pew Foundation. One feature of STKE includes "This Week in Signal Transduction" which is created by an algorithm that goes across the journals and creates a virtual journal. They also use connection map technology.
Minutes from a presentation by George Roncaglia, NASA Langley Research Center at the CENDI meeting on February 2, 1999. Mr. Roncaglia discussed changes at NASA in the context of dwindling resources in a volatile environment. NASA 's products and services are dependent on partnerships with the NASA Centers and other organizations. He provided a brief explanation about the NASA Image Exchange System (NIX), a distributed photographic archive that has over 500,000 photographs, along with video and audio clips.
Minutes from a presentation by Carlynn Thompson at the CENDI meeting on June 1, 1999. Ms. Thompson discussed the USAF Online News which is an online newspaper which focuses on people, missions and resource news in the USAF. The goal of the newspaper is to improve communication between senior USAF leaders and USAF people. Online News employs a three-tier architecture using Oracle and WebObjects with Java-based network applications. This architecture provides security and allows the system to become more complex. Templates were created to allow authoring and editing to be done more efficiently. Metadata tags accompany the full text. The issue process involves creating static HTML web pages.
This Brief discusses the benefits of technology transfer and gives an overview of the legislation that made it possible. Technology transfer is defined as a process by which technology developed in one organization, in one area, or for one purpose is applied in another organization, in another area, or for another purpose. This process assists the government in meeting national needs, including the economic growth that results from new commercialization in the private sector; improves the requirements for products and processes to operate effectively and efficiently; and the demand at the state and local level for increased goods and services. The process for handling technology transfer is discussed at length as well as the current promotion efforts by the Federal Government.
This article recaps the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition's (SPARC) achievements and describes ways in which SPARC expects to develop in the future. SPARC has been instrumental in starting new journals, lowering the cost of journals, and stimulating increased publishing in the not-for-profit sector. SPARC's focus in the future includes the incubation of alternatives to current high-priced journals and digital aggregations; public advocacy of changes in the system; and education campaigns. SPARC and the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) are partnering on the new scholarly communications initiative 1. SPARC and SPARC Europe were participants in the creation of the Budapest Open Access Initiative (BOAI).
This article comments on the U.S. Congress's exploration of whether the cost of journal publications is hindering access to publicly funded research. The proposal introduced by Martin Sabo in (H.R. 2613) in conjunction with the Public Library of Science (PLoS) would put the results of scientific research that was funded primarily by the federal government into the public domain by requiring scientists to forgo copyright protection for such work. PLoS maintains that the rising cost of many journals is denying the public access to new discoveries. A new set of peer-reviewed journals that would be freely available on the Internet is being developed by PLoS will be introduced in October, 2003. The House and Senate Appropriations Committee are expected to request NIH to report on how the rising subscrption charges of for-profit biomedical research publishers are affecting access to taxpayer-funded research.
The Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ) web site provides open access to scholarly journals for primary researchers. Journals must be peer-reviewed or editorial quality control must be used for journals to be included. The goal of DOAJ is to provide a simplified method for access and input to scholarly information that will result in increased visibility and usage. Journals can be searched by subject or title.
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) has developed a web site to support and disseminate information about the impact of open access, current trends in intellectual property and copyright issues on higher education and academic research. The web site provides links to ARL's resource guide on the issues and challenges of providing open access.
The Bethesda Statement is a summary of draft principles on open access publishing within the biomedical research community. The principles were drafted at a meeting held on April 11, 2003 at the headquarters of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Chevy Chase, Maryland. The intention of the meeting was stimulate discussion on how to proceed in providing open access to the primary scientific literature. The document is comprised of four sections followed by the reports of three working groups. The group is planning to draft a final set of principles in a few months and then will seek to have them formally endorsed by funding agencies, scientific societies, pulishers, librarians, research instituitons and scientists as the accepted standard for publication of peer-reviewed reports of original research in the biomedical sciences.
The Public Library of Science (PLoS) website provides free access to scientific reports, articles and other documents. Plos publishes its own peer-reviewed journals including Plos Biology and PLoS Medicine, and will expand to include Plos Biology, PLoS Chemistry and PLoS Computer Science. All accepted articles adhere to rigorous peer review and high editorial and production standards. PLoS is a nonprofit corporation whose goal is to provide a model for sustainable open-access publication and to make scientific and technical literature freely accessible to everyone. The website has a detailed FAQ section that answers many questions concerning open-access publishing, their journals, and the the PLoS organization.
This article explores the contradictory and redundant economic aspects of the current scholarly publishing situation with a focus on the viability of an open-access model for publishing. The author examines the overlap in content between subscription-based and open access sources. Currently open access journals make up 10-20 percent of online journals The author's close examination of the economic issues of journal publishing is aimed at assisting scholarly associations and their members in determining whether open access journal publishing is the business model that should be followed.
The goals of the Board on International Scientific Organizations (BISO) are to strengthen U.S. participation in international scientific, engineering, and medical organizations and to assist in building capacity in these organizations. BISO serves as the national committee for the International Council for Science (ICSU) and is a board within the National Research Council's Policy and Global Affairs Division. BISO's web site provides access to many of their projects on open access and public domain information. Background papers, symposium abstracts and bios are also available from the web site.
The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) is the result of an initiative at the Plenipotentiary Conference of the International Telecommunicatiion Union (ITU) meeting held in Minneapolis in 1998. ITU recognized that telecommunications played an important role at the political, social, and cultural level and that the gap between information "haves" and "have nots" was increasing. The United Nations recognized the need for international cooperation among the various national and global initiatives fostering Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) for development. In 2001, the ITU, with endorsements from the UN, decided to convene a Summit in two phases with the first phase to be held in Geneva, Switzerland from December 10 to 12, 2003 and the second in Tunis, Tunisia in 2005 from November 16 to 18th. The first phase will address a range of issues related to the Information Society and will adopt a Declaration of Principles and plan of action. The second phase will address development themes in the Information Society, assess any progress that has been made and make any changes to the plan of action from the first phase. The framework for the Summit was endorsed by the UN General Assembly Resolution 56/183 and an intergovernmental Preparatory Committee was established to plan the agenda and organize the Summit. The WSIS web site provides background information on the Summit, funding of the Summit, links to related sites, information on how to participate and the preparatory process for the Summit. WSIS will provide a unique opportunity for all key stakeholders (governments, private sector, civil society, and the United Nations) to assemble and develop a better understanding of the information society revolution and its impact on the international community.
National Science Foundation outlines its approach to changes in both high performance computing and increasing online collaboration. NSF intends to take the lead in sponsoring efforts to improve cyberinfrastructure and to assess what changes will be necessary.
This panel at the September 7-8, 2005, CENDI meeting covers several topics: use of search tools for R & D; value of exhibits in generating interest; use of expert panels; and use of geographic metadata.
At the August 11-12, 2004, CENDI meeting, Ms. Carroll presented on the status of CENDI. Along with discussing increasing membership, Ms.Carroll outlined future goals of CENDI for FY 2005.
This report outlines how Canadian research organizations need to take advantage of emerging technologies to continue to be competitive internationally. The paper also makes recommendations in addition to examining how the scientific world has been impacted by recent information technology improvement
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