Talk:AWOB Meeting 2011-05-12

MPDL,GAVO

The MINUTES will be available soon.

This is the view of scientists and AWOB people, what AWOB project communication is about:
 * Alexis: What features will go beyond GAVO? How will the limited formats of current publication tools be extended within AWOB?
 * Answer: E.g., e-publications, a portal to finding and using external data, visualization tools, detailed authorization/authentication will go beyond GAVO. In addition, the limited formats of current publications will be extended in AWOB by allowing the storage of different kind of data types (e.g., movies), by assigning metadata to the data. In addition, tools will be stored with which the data have been extracted/evaluated from the RAW data.
 * Andrea: Individuals/small groups or large groups as users? Who is allowed to invite scientists for a project?
 * Answer: Small and large groups will be possible: Once somebody created a project, he might invite others to join the project.
 * Frank: Allow adding information to sources in a project (e.g. from your investigations or a database)!
 * Matthias: In the design phase of the software, interactions with and feedback from the scientists are crucial!
 * Roderik: Where will the data be stored? Why not in general in AWOB?
 * Answer: Small data sets can be stored locally within AWOB, for huge data sets we propose storage in the computer centers associated to the MPG. The requested storage for large-scale projects would simply be too huge to handle.
 * Frank: What kind of data etc. do we want to store and to make public after a project is finished?
 * Answer: Typically, at least the figures/table/text of a publication and RAW data (or pointer to the RAW data) are saved and maintained. If possible, metadata should be assigned and tools provided to get from the RAW data to published data. If the author (team) wishes, data formats incompatible with paper publications (like movies…) and “making of” files can be taken over. If a project is closed and there will be a follow-up project, we should consider to allow the preservation of the whole project and its authorizations. Perhaps the status then should be “sleeping” instead of “closed”.
 * Jaiwon: What data will be published if the project is finished?
 * Answer: In the e-publication all data mentioned in the last answer can be published.
 * Somebody: Will the users be forced to publish her/his data?
 * Answer: Within the MPG and other science organizations a general deposit request for publications and the underlying data is being discussed right now.…
 * Natasa: What happens after the closure of a project? Will the non-published parts stay within AWOB for upcoming projects? Where will the project be archived? What about re-opening a project?
 * Answer: See comments on question of Frank above. Archiving: Associated computer-centers. A re-opening of projects for follow-ups or data-reevaluation should be possible if the project has no been formally closed.
 * Gerard: MPG should in principle provide long term archiving!
 * Comment: There is an agreement within the MPG on the long term archiving issue. RZG and GWDG are supposed and prepared to do the so-called bit-stream archiving. However, real long term data preservation with issues like metadata generation and storage is still in the discussion phase.
 * Andrea: Consortia usually make agreements on the RAW data, but not on analysis outcomes!
 * Comment: This is exactly why AWOB offers the possibility to put the “making of” etc. in the e-publication.
 * Frank: Compare the ROSAT project!
 * Comment: In the case of ROSAT, all RAW data are still available and accessible. There are, however, problems with the interfaces used the last decades: The operating system of the software – offering already a standard analysis – is not running any more an actual computers. The data will nevertheless be accessible by other, new interfaces.
 * Somebody: AWOB should support multiple standard interfaces for data access!
 * Comment: That is true. If interfaces are non-standard, the users should supply them within the e-publication.
 * Roderik: Can a scientist be member of different projects? Possibly of competing ones? What about students?
 * Answer: Yes! The authorization process should be fine grained, so that each project member can be assigned to the appropriate user rights.
 * Alexis: Can a user select data from figures/tables to reuse it?
 * Answer: This is our actual understanding of e-publications.
 * Somebody: Will AWOB provide tools storing parameters automatically coming out from analysis tools/pipelines?
 * Answer: This is an interesting suggestion. AWOB should consider such tools.
 * Question: Is AWOB a productivity management tool, coupled with electronic publication of data?
 * Answer: In a certain sense. AWOB indeed covers the whole scientific life cycle from building a working group and acquiring and analyzing data to the final e-publication.
 * Comment: There is a common sense among scientist and AWOB team members that we should try to have a demonstrator available as soon as possible.
 * General comment:
 * People need to talk, not only to email
 * Communications are helpful. However, the groups should not be too big.
 * We need contact persons
 * We need to talk to the customer
 * We will soon have a pilot project and then roughly a dozen of scientists work with the AWOB team
 * Comment: What AWOB could look like from the software side:
 * Wiki like platform
 * Searches through ADS
 * Authorization / authentication
 * Interfaces for external data/queries/tools
 * Might contain/be an annotated archive

At the end of the meeting the question was raised when we should have the next meeting. It was agreed that it would be useful if such a meeting could be held at the end of July. At this time a first demonstrator should be available to be presented and discussed.