How to Position Your Globus Data Portal for Success Ten Good Practices

Science gateways allow science and engineering communities to access shared data, software, computing services, and instruments. Science gateways have gained a lot of traction in the last twenty years, as evidenced by projects such as the Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI) and the Center of Excellence on Science Gateways (SGX3) in the US, The Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) and its platforms in Australia, and the projects around Virtual Research Environments in Europe. A few mature frameworks have evolved with their different strengths and foci and have been taken up by a larger community such as the Globus Data Portal, Hubzero, Tapis, and Galaxy. However, even when gateways are built on successful frameworks, they continue to face the challenges of ongoing maintenance costs and how to meet the ever-expanding needs of the community they serve with enhanced features. It is not uncommon that gateways with compelling use cases are nonetheless unable to get past the prototype phase and become a full production service, or if they do, they don't survive more than a couple of years. While there is no guaranteed pathway to success, it seems likely that for any gateway there is a need for a strong community and/or solid funding streams to create and sustain its success. With over twenty years of examples to draw from, this presentation goes into detail for ten factors common to successful and enduring gateways that effectively serve as best practices for any new or developing gateway.

1. NSF awards
1547611
2231406
How to Position Your Globus Data Portal for Success:
Ten Good Practices

Sandra Gesing, Kerk Kee, Sean Cleveland, Annelie Rugg and
Steve Brandt
May 8, 2024

2. Gateway
Ambassadors
Members of a professional
community
•Community activities
•learning from peers
•sharing information
•Ambassador activities
•meeting with individuals
•hosting awareness sessions

3. What This Talk is About

Recommendations

4. What This Talk is NOT About

A Fully Proven Recipe
for Success

5. Two Groups of Recommendations

•Five good practices for technical design
•Five good practices for social organization of
science gateways

6. Recommendation 1
Adaptability, Extensibility, and Scalability

7. Recommendation 2

Usability and Accessibility

“After all, usability really just
means that making sure that
something works well: that a
person … can use the thing -
whether it's a Web site, a fighter
jet, or a revolving door - for its
intended purpose without
getting hopelessly frustrated.”
Steve Krug in “Don't make me think!:
A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability”, 2005

8. Recommendation 3

Reproducibility

“Reproducibility means obtaining consistent
computational results using the same input
data, computational steps, methods, code, and
conditions of analysis. Replicability means
obtaining consistent results across studies
aimed at answering the same scientific
question, each of which has obtained its own
data.”
https://phys.org/news/2019-05-replicability-science.html

9. Recommendation 4

FAIR compliant

•Findable
•Accessible
•Interoperable
•Reusable

10. Recommendation 5

Standards-based, Priorities and/or Maintainability

11. Recommendation 6

Evangelism

12. Recommendation 7

Community and Advocacy - Funding/Stakeholder
(Institutions, Communities) Buy-in

13. Recommendation 8

Visibility and Awareness

14. Recommendation 9

Use cases and success stories

15. Recommendation 10

Documentation and Onboarding Resources

16. Outlook

10 Recommendations What NOT to Do

17. Thank You


https://sciencegateways.org/