Information:
The way of doing scientific research across all domains is undergoing a paradigm shift, enabled by fast-paced technological advancements and driven by the globalisation of the scientific community as well as by the mounting demands to address the “Grand Challenges” faced by society.
This rapid evolution is well exemplified by the opening of the research process, the astounding increase of producers and consumers of scientific data (including for example crowd-source initiatives), and, ultimately, by a massive increase of available data to be processed, particularly through distributed computing.
In this regard, the employment of cloud infrastructures is immensely benefitting and advancing scientific research across all domains. Yet, this rapidly evolving technological landscape is also raising a number of new and unprecedented questions about rules and regulations, privacy, transparency and policies related to such data.
And while some science communities have established their own framework in terms of (big) data policy, for some others this process is not yet fully developed.
Moreover, the possibility to create unprecedented interconnections among different research communities also raises the question how these communities – and their data – can and will interact in the scenario of future large-scale cloud computing initiatives, with the ultimate aim of enhancing scientific collaboration, data dissemination and knowledge creation.