Abstract

Wim Jansen
E-Infrastructure for the European Research Area - a Roadmap


Seamless European wide and open access to Digital Academic Repositories requires the provision of interoperable services and fast access to large amounts of distributed data. Research Infrastructures like GÉANT (inter connecting National Research and Education Networks) and Grid-empowered infrastructures, primarily focussed in providing advanced services to the research communities, will accelerate the deployment and impact of these Digital Repositories.

More and more the scientific community is facing increasing needs for
  • High capacity infrastructures for virtual communities;
  • Long-term preservation of scientific and cultural data;
  • User needs in data curation;
  • Better scholarly communication.
All this relates strongly to activities coordinated by DG Information Society and Media in FP6 and is becoming increasingly important in the preparations for the FP7 Specific Programme on Capacities.

The presentation will first give an overview of the actions undertaken in the current Framework Programme 6, particularly the extent to which Grid infrastructures provide a number of building blocks on top of what the GÉANT network provides as basic connectivity for researchers.

Then more specific attention will be given to the "Capacities" Programme within the upcoming seventh European framework programme for Research and Technical Development covering the period up to 2013 where we intend to involve and support more user communities beyond the eScience world, notably to improve the scientific community's access to research information, research data and virtual learning environments, and promotion of standards based approaches to knowledge discovery, storage and sharing with the objective to put in place a European wide and interoperable infrastructure for academic scientific material repositories.



Bielefeld University Library - last update: 01/18/2006