CI-Server: Towards a Collective Scientific Knowledge Environment

A well known challenge in scientific computing is the flow of information sharing in support of scientific research. The issue is further exacerbated when research is done collaboratively because more people need access to the same information, often simultaneously. The Web has emerged as a popular solution for enabling discovery and sharing of information between people and applications. Unfortunately, use of web-based technologies is not always easy. For example, two sites can be so different that searching for information on one site may have little similarity to the other. In this paper, we describe an environment that is focused on facilitating the sharing of information for scientific research. Through a server that we call the CI-Server, we support the collection of structured and unstructured scientific data as well as discussions about the data. A client-based API (CI-Client API) was created to enable access to the CI-Server from within scientific applications. Thus, scientific collaboration is supported by allowing the scientist to work with their tools while sharing over the Web instead of the traditional method of having the scientist learn new environments. As a result, scientists are not forced to learn specific web server or portal environments because the utilities that they are accustomed to using have the ‘know-how’ to access the knowledge collected at the CI-Server. CI-Server has been used in support of scientific activities in the areas of environmental and geo-sciences as part of a NSF-funded Center for Cyber-Infrastructure, CyberShare.