New roles of research data infrastructure in research paradigm evolution

closer to the traditional concept of physical or “hard” facilities, such as accelerators, telescopes, etc., and provided the tools and platforms for scientists

Played the role of observation, generation and collection of research data with the extreme experimental approaches and conditions from the perspective of dataflow.

Included research data assets and resources, such as scientific collections, reference libraries, data repositories, intellectual property, etc.; the standards, protocols, and services enabling data management and remote access; analytic and computational algorithms; even human capital infrastructure.

covered the aggregation, storage, management, sharing and provision procedures in research dataflow, as well as the mechanisms to guarantee them. It should be noted that these infrastructures maintain historical data, information, references, knowledge that may be demanded in the future.

Offered interconnected ecosystem, like co-designed advanced computing resources, data and software service, research and education networks.

Scientific results and outputs from certain research were shared, analyzed, near real time distributed, accessed across global physical or virtual networks through them, also ensured the efficiency and trustworthiness.

European high-performance computing service, later called PRACE, was established to form the partnership and network for advanced computing in Europe, aiming to utilize the top-level computing machines to fulfill the requirements of different scientific domains.

Emphasized on the efficient use of the e-infrastructure to deal with the production and use of unprecedented quantities of research data, not only those coming directly from facilities, but also those contained in scientific publications.

Pointed out an impression of the European RI Ecosystem,

The e-infrastructure was transversal to all domains to develop the convergent and sustainable services in landscape analysis.

Enhanced the concept of the European RI Ecosystem, and the role of e-infrastructure.

Widely acknowledged and accepted the importance of data infrastructures for solving cutting-edge and interdisciplinary complex scientific and social problems, by policy-makers, researchers, funders, industry and society.

Renamed the domain e-infrastructure to Data, Computing and Digital Research Infrastructures (DIGIT), highlighting the more general and explicit mandate of data.

Ensured convergence of strategies and implementation actions with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

Continuing to deepen the ecological concept of European RI Ecosystem.

Announced 11 new projects filling gaps in European RI capacities. eight of them were data infrastructures (horizontal) and data-driven facilities (vertical), involving computing and data science, brain science, population, ecology and environment, energy and social science.