Collaborative Research: Conceptualizing an Institute for Empowering Long Tail Research

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The majority of NSF-funded research occurs in small and medium-sized laboratories (SMLs) that often comprise a single PI and a few students and postdocs. For these small teams, the growing importance of cyberinfrastructure and its applications in discovery and innovation is as much problem as opportunity. With limited resources and expertise, even simple data discovery, collection, analysis, management, and sharing tasks are difficult. An unfortunate consequence is that in this "long tail" of science, modern computational methods often are not exploited, much valuable data goes unshared, and too much time is consumed by routine tasks. To date, research investments in science cyberinfrastructure have disproportionately emphasized big science projects, providing tools for use by IT staff and technology savvy researchers rather than complete applications consumable by end users. This project's goal is to lay a foundation for a more balanced research agenda by focusing exclusively on the needs of SMLs.This Software Institute Conceptualization project aims to determine whether these obstacles to discovery and innovation can be overcome via the use of software as a service (SaaS) methods. Such methods have proven immensely effective for small and medium businesses due to their ability to deliver advanced capabilities while streamlining the user experience and achieving economies of scale. To determine whether similar benefits can apply for SMLs, the project team will engage with multiple science communities to identify science practices, match science practices against candidate SaaS offerings, and evaluate business models that could permit sustainable development of those offerings. The outcome of this process is intended to be a compelling and competitive strategic plan for an NSF Software Innovation and Sustainability Institute that both meets immediate needs of the initial science communities and provides a basis for a new, more cost-effective method of addressing cyberinfrastructure needs across all NSF directorates.