About this Research Topic
Computational infrastructure—encompassing computers, storage systems, networking, data repositories, and support services—has become indispensable to progress in a wide range of science and engineering domains. Access to, and availability of, computational infrastructure are required not only for research activities, but also for the development of future researchers and professionals in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. Computational infrastructure supports some of these activities directly, as in the case of modeling and simulation; and others indirectly, as in the case of observational and experimental work that uses the infrastructure for data analysis, data preservation, and other functions.
This computational infrastructure is not free, however, and these costs are borne by institutions or are funded by government grants. These funding sources generally require some evaluation of the value of these investments. Yet many of the infrastructure components themselves are multiple steps removed from, and only one factor in the creation of, the outputs, outcomes, and longer-term impacts that the computational infrastructure makes possible.
The goal of this Research Topic is to collect and gather methods and practices for evaluating infrastructure activities, understanding the communities using the infrastructure, and quantifying the impacts of research computing and data infrastructure on research, education, and the STEM workforce. Topics appropriate for this Research Topic include the following:
• resource availability, utilization, and outcomes
• analysis of scientific outputs and outcomes, such as journal articles and other published works
• evaluation of infrastructure operations and its contributions to outcomes
• workforce and professional development outcomes resulting from use of computational infrastructure
• metrics and measurement of infrastructure user communities
• impact of novel cyberinfrastructure architectures on research
• application of practices and methods from non-computational infrastructure to computational resource environments
• understanding the equity of benefits of cyberinfrastructure throughout the community
• other methods and practices for quantifying the demographics, evaluation and impact of computational infrastructures.
This computational infrastructure is not free, however, and these costs are borne by institutions or are funded by government grants. These funding sources generally require some evaluation of the value of these investments. Yet many of the infrastructure components themselves are multiple steps removed from, and only one factor in the creation of, the outputs, outcomes, and longer-term impacts that the computational infrastructure makes possible.
The goal of this Research Topic is to collect and gather methods and practices for evaluating infrastructure activities, understanding the communities using the infrastructure, and quantifying the impacts of research computing and data infrastructure on research, education, and the STEM workforce. Topics appropriate for this Research Topic include the following:
• resource availability, utilization, and outcomes
• analysis of scientific outputs and outcomes, such as journal articles and other published works
• evaluation of infrastructure operations and its contributions to outcomes
• workforce and professional development outcomes resulting from use of computational infrastructure
• metrics and measurement of infrastructure user communities
• impact of novel cyberinfrastructure architectures on research
• application of practices and methods from non-computational infrastructure to computational resource environments
• understanding the equity of benefits of cyberinfrastructure throughout the community
• other methods and practices for quantifying the demographics, evaluation and impact of computational infrastructures.
Keywords: data, infrastructure, computing, research, storage systems, education, resource availability, metrics, measurement, non-computational infrastructure, networking, support services, engineering, research activity
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
