COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: EAGER: Towards Building a CyberInfrastructure for Facilitating the Assessment, Dissemination, Discovery, & Reuse of Software and Data Products

合作研究：渴望：建立网络基础设施以促进评估、传播、发现、

• 批准号: 2314202
• 负责人: Ritu Arora
• 金额: $ 17.5万
• 依托单位: Wayne State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-01-01 至 2023-10-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2314202&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: COLLABORATIVE; RESEARCH; EAGER; Towards; Building

Over the last several years, the projects funded through the various NSF programs, such as the Cyberinfrastructure for Sustained Scientific Innovation (CSSI), Data Infrastructure Building Blocks (DIBBs), and Software Infrastructure for Sustained Innovation (SI2) programs, have resulted in innovative software and data products with broad societal impacts. Collecting the information on the short-term and long-term impact of these products on their intended user communities in terms of quantifiable metrics can be important for future funding decisions, and hence is in national interest. However, collecting such information can be a challenging task given the diversity of the NSF-funded products, their usage environments, and their target audiences. Additionally, when a product is composed of (or integrated with) other products, it can be difficult to capture the provenance trail of all the embedded products, which impacts the process of gathering the metrics necessary in evaluating their success. Moreover, the knowledge of the entire technology stack used in a product can enable other developers or adopters of that product in analyzing the code reuse and integration cost. When analyzing the feasibility of integrating software products, or interoperating with them, or extending them, it is also important to check the compatibility of their licenses and software stacks so that one can determine if the products can interoperate legally and seamlessly, and if the derived products can be disseminated as intended. It can be time-consuming to carefully review and understand the impact of the licenses of the base products on any derived product, or to check if one product can co-exist or interoperate with another product. Hence, having a central and a publicly accessible infrastructure for (1) tracking the metrics of the NSF-funded products, (2) checking their license and software stack compatibility, and (3) discovering the software stack and its evolution, can be useful for quantifying the societal impacts of the NSF-funded products and in promoting their dissemination. The overarching goal of this project is to develop a software infrastructure for facilitating the assessment, discovery, dissemination, and reuse of publicly accessible software and data products. As a preliminary step towards meeting this goal, this project has initiated research and development activities for prototyping: (1) iTracker: the software infrastructure for tracking the user-defined metrics of products released and deployed on different platforms & computing environments, (2) CompChecker: a license and software-stack compatibility checker for advising the users on the feasibility of integrating or interoperating with existing products, and (3) Discovery Catalog: a prototype of a catalog of NSF-funded products which can display the most recent information captured by iTracker for each product of interest and integrate CompChecker as a feature. The project demonstrates the use of block-chain for securely storing an immutable copy of the metadata related to the cataloged products and this metadata can in turn be useful for tracking the evolution of the products during their life cycle. The project demonstrates the infrastructure required for identifying and promoting the relevant metrics for evaluating different categories of products. The project has the potential of encouraging the developer community to adopt best practices for product dissemination and will likely foster cross-disciplinary collaborations.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

在过去的几年里，由NSF资助的项目，如持续科学创新的网络基础设施（CSSI）、数据基础设施构建模块（DIBBs）和持续创新的软件基础设施（SI2）项目，已经产生了具有广泛社会影响的创新软件和数据产品。根据可量化的指标收集这些产品对其预期用户群体的短期和长期影响的信息，对未来的资金决策非常重要，因此符合国家利益。然而，考虑到nsf资助的产品、它们的使用环境和目标受众的多样性，收集这些信息可能是一项具有挑战性的任务。此外，当一个产品由其他产品组成（或与其他产品集成）时，很难捕获所有嵌入产品的来源踪迹，这会影响收集评估其成功所需的度量标准的过程。此外，对产品中使用的整个技术栈的了解可以使该产品的其他开发人员或采用者分析代码重用和集成成本。在分析集成软件产品、与它们互操作或扩展它们的可行性时，检查它们的许可证和软件堆栈的兼容性也很重要，这样就可以确定产品是否可以合法和无缝地互操作，以及派生产品是否可以按预期传播。仔细审查和理解基础产品的许可对任何派生产品的影响，或者检查一个产品是否可以与另一个产品共存或互操作，都是非常耗时的。因此，为(1)跟踪nsf资助产品的指标，(2)检查它们的许可证和软件堆栈兼容性，以及(3)发现软件堆栈及其演变，拥有一个中央和公共可访问的基础设施，对于量化nsf资助产品的社会影响和促进它们的传播是有用的。这个项目的首要目标是开发一个软件基础设施，以促进可公开访问的软件和数据产品的评估、发现、传播和重用。作为实现这一目标的初步步骤，该项目已经启动了原型的研究和开发活动：(1)iTracker：用于跟踪在不同平台和计算环境中发布和部署的产品的用户定义指标的软件基础设施；(2)CompChecker：一个许可和软件堆栈兼容性检查程序，用于向用户建议与现有产品集成或互操作的可行性；(3)Discovery Catalog：一个nsf资助的产品目录的原型，它可以显示iTracker为每个感兴趣的产品捕获的最新信息，并将CompChecker集成为一个功能。该项目演示了使用区块链来安全存储与编目产品相关的元数据的不可变副本，该元数据反过来可用于跟踪产品在其生命周期中的演变。该项目演示了识别和促进评估不同类别产品的相关度量所需的基础设施。该项目有可能鼓励开发人员社区采用产品传播的最佳实践，并可能促进跨学科合作。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。