Catalogue of E-RIHS resources and services
Meghini C., Benassi L., Galeotti M., Bartalesi V., Concordia C., Castillejo M., Calvo C., Andreassi E., Striova J.
The Deliverable 8.1 describes the work carried in Task 8.3 "Catalogue of E-RIHS resources and services". With the term resource we intend any entity that may be of interest to a Infrastructure such as the one that the E-RIHS PP project is setting up, i.e. mainly datasets and services, but also people, organizations, instruments, and other entities. The catalogue aims at providing researchers with information related to Heritage Science resources available within E-RIHS through a formal model that helps categorising them according to their different features. Such features will also be used for discovering the resources in the Catalogue. The catalogue structure was designed to serve as the basis for accounting in-kind contributions and, in perspective, to be a single access point for resource discovery and access services.Source: Research report, E-RIHS PP, 739503, 2020
Project(s): E-RIHS PP

See at: CNR ExploRA

2020 Conference article Open Access

Store Scientific Workflows Data in SSHOC Repository
Concordia C., Meghini C., Benedetti F.
Today scientific workflows are used by scientists as a way to define automated, scalable, and portable in-silico experiments. Having a formal description of an experiment can improve replicability and reproducibility of the experiment. However, simply storing and publishing the workflow may be not enough, an accurate management of provenance data generated during workflow life cycle is crucial to achieve reproducibility. This document presents the activity being carried out by CNR-ISTI in task 5.2 of the SSHOC project to add to the repository service developed in the task, functionalities to store, access and manage `workflow data' in order to improve replicability and reproducibility of e-science experiments.Source: Language Resources and Evaluation Conference, pp. 1–4, Marseille, 11-16/05/2020
Project(s): SSHOC

See at: ISTI Repository | CNR ExploRA | www.aclweb.org

2020 Report Open Access

AIMH research activities 2020
Aloia N., Amato G., Bartalesi V., Benedetti F., Bolettieri P., Carrara F., Casarosa V., Ciampi L., Concordia C., Corbara S., Esuli A., Falchi F., Gennaro C., Lagani G., Massoli F. V., Meghini C., Messina N., Metilli D., Molinari A., Moreo A., Nardi A., Pedrotti A., Pratelli N., Rabitti F., Savino P., Sebastiani F., Thanos C., Trupiano L., Vadicamo L., Vairo C.
Annual Report of the Artificial Intelligence for Media and Humanities laboratory (AIMH) research activities in 2020.

See at: ISTI Repository | CNR ExploRA

2019 Conference article Open Access

Building a reference architecture for virtual research environments
Jeffery K. G., Meghini C., Concordia C., Furfari F.
Virtual Research Environments (VREs) aim to support multidisciplinary research and collaboration between researchers, but face great challenges from data heterogeneity, user experience issues, and fast changes to datasets. This complicates research on multidisciplinary societal challenges. The objective of this paper is to present a reference architecture and components that can be (re)used to construct a general, domain-specific or cross-domain enhanced VRE (e-VRE) that enhances FAIR-ness of data and process interoperability across research infrastructures. The e-VRE makes it easier to conduct multidisciplinary research by assisting the researcher in accessing and utilising the assets of research, commonly stored in digital Research Infrastructures. The reference architecture also reduces complexity by interfacing with research management systems.Source: IADIS Information Systems Conference (IS 2019), pp. 91–98, University of Applied Sciences, Heidelberglaan 15, Utrecht , The Netherlands, 11-13/04/2019
DOI: 10.33965/is2019_201905l012
Project(s): VRE4EIC

See at: ISTI Repository | www.iadisportal.org | academic.microsoft.com | CNR ExploRA | www.iadisportal.org

2019 Report Open Access

SSHOC - D3.2 Inventory of SSH citation practices, and choice for SSHOC citation formats and implementation planning
Larrousse N., Broeder D., Brase J., Concordia C., Kalaitzi V.
The SSHOC project aims to build the SSH (Social Science and Humanities) part of the EOSC (European Open Science Cloud). One of the main goals of the project is to ensure that SSH will be present in EOSC and that their specifics are taken into account. In this regard, an important point is to be able to give high visibility to the research data used in Social Science and Humanities following FAIR data principles. This can be achieved by fostering "Data Citation" through providing a common mechanism to cite SSH data and build stronger links between data and publications. An expected side effect would be to enhance the reproducibility of SSH research, which is not very common nowadays. In line with these goals, this report delivers an overview of existing data-citing mechanisms intended for citing data, that are currently used in different communities with a focus on the SSH. It then provides some guidelines describing what is relevant in the SSHOC context with respect to the technology to be implemented and also about the structuring of the content.Source: Project report, SSHOC, Deliverable D3.2, 2019
Project(s): SSHOC

See at: ISTI Repository | CNR ExploRA | zenodo.org

2018 Report Open Access

VRE4EIC Deliverable 3.4 Enhanced VREs
Meghini C., Jeffery K., Concordia C., Trupiano L., Patkos T., Minadakis N., Marketakis Y, Kritsotakis V., Bailo D., Zhao Z.
This deliverable provides the results of two tasks within WP3 of the VRE4EIC project: Task 3.4 "Integration of Reference VRE and Enhanced Existing VREs" and Task 3.5 "Design and development of a GUI for eVRE". In particular: The enhanced VREs are extended implementation of the EPOS and ENVRIplus VREs which have been obtained by migrating the architectures of these VREs into new architectures that includes building blocks developed by the VRE4EIC project, in the context of task 3.3. The resulting architectures provide the involved VREs with additional functionality that extends their capabilities in significant ways for the underlying research communities, while at the same time prove the functional and technical validity of the Reference Architecture developed (D3.1) and implemented by the project. The eVRE GUI provides eVRE with an access point for the human user, thus addressing the usability of VREs, which is one of the main goals of the project. In addition, the present deliverable provides the Canonical Reference Prototype (CRP) of the Reference Architecture, also produced by Task 3.4 of the project by integrating existing technologies to implement the components of the Reference Architecture. The realization of the CRP has required the development of a Technical Architecture, which complements the Reference Architecture by selecting a set of suitable implementation techniques and open- source components.Source: Project report, VRE4EIC, Deliverable D3.4, 2018
Project(s): VRE4EIC

See at: ISTI Repository | CNR ExploRA

2018 Report Open Access

Deliverable 3.5 Final Architecture Design
Meghini C., Jeffery K., Concordia C., Trupiano L., Patkos T., Minadakis N., Marketakis Y., Kritsotakis V., Bailo D., Zhao Z.
This is the final deliverable on architecture in VRE4EIC. The first (D3.1) explained the methodology, approach and overall architecture. This deliverable provides details of the architectural components, interfaces and related considerations leading to the technical architecture and the canonical reference prototype. Components of the architecture have been utilised in EPOS and ENVRIplus and validated there; the reference architecture has been demonstrated with the Canonical Reference Prototype.Source: Project report, VRE4EIC, Deliverable D3.5, 2018
Project(s): VRE4EIC

See at: ISTI Repository | CNR ExploRA

VRE4EIC - Deliverable 3.3 Building Blocks
Meghini C., Jeffery K., Concordia C., Furfari F., Patkos T., Minadakis N., Marketakis Y., Kritsotakis V.
The present report accompanies deliverable D3.3 "Software Building Blocks", resulting from Task T3.3 "Development of Building Blocks to Fill Gaps" of the VRE4EIC project. As the name of the tasks says, Task T 3.3 has received as inputs the Reference Architecture (D3.1), specifying the components of the enhanced VRE (e-VRE for short), and the Gap Analysis (D3.2), indicating which components needs to be implemented to fill the gaps in existing VREs. Based on these inputs, as well on the non-functional requirements collected in D2.1, Task T3.3 has designed a Technical Architecture for implementing the Reference Architecture, and has implemented the components of the Technical Architecture indicated by the Gap Analysis. These components will be taken as input by Task T3.4 "Integration of Reference VRE and Enhanced Existing VREs" to be integrated into the architectures of the EPOS and the ENVRIplus VREs (Task 3.4), thereby enhancing these VREs. D3.3 delivers the implemented components of the Technical Architecture, named "Building Blocks" (BBs from now on for short) for their role in the enhancement of the VREs.Source: Project report, VRE4EIC, Deliverable D3.3, 2017
Project(s): VRE4EIC

See at: CNR ExploRA

VRE4EIC Deliverable 5.2 Implications for the VRE end-users to handle security, privacy and trust issues - first version
Hollink L., Concordia C., Ashley K., Whyte A.
For the e-VRE being developed by the VRE4EIC project, the security, privacy and trust requirements significantly vary amongst the potential end-users from various research domains and public. In deliverable D5.1, the VRE4EIC project has defined the strategies handling potential issues and risks regarding security, privacy and trust aspects. However, these strategies are mainly produced to help the technical developers better design the e-VRE and choose appropriate technologies for the implementation of the e-VRE. We assume that most of the potential end-users will have limited ICT knowledge so that they may have a different understanding or interpretation regarding these strategies to deal with security, privacy and trust related issues. In order to help our potential end- users understand the logic and consideration of the strategies developed in D5.1, this deliverable clarifies these strategies in the early stage of e-VRE development. The user is a global actor representing any user accessing the e-VRE (according to its definition, "VRE users" only concern people that want to access research data). This approach will also help the engagement of potential end-users. After implementing an e-VRE prototype that will be tested by user groups, a second version of this deliverable will be completed in Month 33 (D5.4). Upon acceptance of this strategy document, it will be made publicly available and especially distributed to target users of the existing e-RI initiatives and VRE-related initiatives.Source: Project report, VRE4EIC, Deliverable D5.2, 2017
Project(s): VRE4EIC

See at: CNR ExploRA | www.vre4eic.eu

2017 Conference article Open Access

A Reference Architecture for Virtual Research Environments
Jeffery K. G., Meghini C., Concordia C., Patkos T., Brasse V., Van Ossenbruck J., Marketakis Y., Minadakis N., Marchetti E.
This paper describes the Reference Architecture of the enhanced VRE (e-VRE), a Virtual Research Environment defined in the context of the VRE4EIC Project, funded by EU H2020 e-Infrastructure program. e-VRE is designed to overcome limits of existing VREs with respect to a number of orthogonal dimensions: improving the quality of VRE user experience by providing user centered, secure, privacy compliant, sustainable environments for accessing data, composing workflows and tracking data publications; increasing VRE usage in multidisciplinary research domains by abstracting and reusing building blocks and workflows from existing VRE initiatives; improving the interoperability of heterogeneous discovery, contextual and detailed metadata across all layers of the VRE.Source: 15th International Symposium of Information Science, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin (D), 13-15/03/2017
DOI: 10.18452/1448
Project(s): VRE4EIC

See at: edoc-Server. Open-Access-Publikationsserver der Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin | edoc.hu-berlin.de | CNR ExploRA

2017 Journal article Open Access

A Reference Architecture for Enhanced Virtual Research Environments
Concordia C., Meghini C.
Virtual Research Environments (VREs) are rapidly becoming a popular technology for supporting scientists during their research work. In order to overcome the current heterogeneity, a reference architecture for VREs is being developed by the VRE4EIC Project.Source: ERCIM news (2017): 9–10.
Project(s): VRE4EIC

See at: ercim-news.ercim.eu | ISTI Repository | CNR ExploRA

VRE4EIC - Deliverable 3.1 Architecture Design
Meghini C., Jeffery K., Concordia C., Marchetti E., Patkos T., Minadakis N., Marketakis Y., Chrysakis I., Van Ossenbruggen J., Wielemaker J.
This deliverable presents the initial Reference Architecture of the VRE4EIC Project. The Reference Architecture is one of the results of the first year of work of the project. In order to derive it, the project conducted more than sixty interviews, and carefully characterized five existing e-Research Infrastructures. This way, it obtained a significant picture of the needs of the scientists, and of how these needs are met by the existing e-Research Infrastructures. This picture was an input to the architects of the Project, who analysed it in detail, and distilled an exhaustive list of functions whose implementation is needed to satisfy the requirements in ways that advance the current e-Research Infrastructures. Competence in software system design and development, as well as consideration of existing standards and best practices, allowed the VRE4EIC architects to group functions into components, and to further structure components in sub-components, thereby laying the basic building blocks of the Reference Architecture. Each component or sub-component was assigned a set of interfaces, each consisting of methods performing the tasks that provide the lowest level of granularity of the Reference Architecture. An intense activity of verification then ensued, aiming at verifying that the methods on the component interfaces could be appropriately composed into complex workflows able to realize the required functionality. The deliverable presents the result of this work, and documents the activities and the decisions that led to it. Based on this solid piece of work, the project is entering its second year of activity. While keeping the Reference Architecture aligned with additionally collected requirements and e-RI characterizations, a gap analysis will be conducted to assess two existing Virtual Research Environments with respect to the Reference Architecture. The gap analysis will allow the project to select the components of the Reference Architecture that will be implemented in order to enhance the selected Virtual Research Environments. As a result of these activities, at the end of the project the final Reference Architecture will be released.Source: Project report, VRE4EIC, Deliverable D3.1, 2016
Project(s): VRE4EIC

See at: CNR ExploRA | www.vre4eic.eu

2016 Report Open Access

Europeana Cloud - Deliverable 4.3 - A report and a plan on future directions for improving metadata in the Europeana Cloud
Lefferts M., Concordia C., Anastasiou L., Jahnke A., Kittelmann M., Manguinhas H.
The aim of the task reported in this Deliverable 4.3 was to explore how we could arrive at shared metadata enrichment, by making the most of the large amount of data already gathered in Europeana and the Cloud environment developed in the project. We explored whether we could enrich the data by comparing Europeana data with data from external sources (task 4.3.1). Secondly, we explored whether there was data internally in the large Europeana set that could meaningfully be connected to other data in the set (task 4.3.2). Both approaches would offer better contextualisation of Europeana data for the end user. In Task 4.3.1, ISTI­CNR demonstrated the use of image recognition techniques to explore possible overlap between the datasets of Europeana and the WikiArt data set. As a side effect, it showed that duplicates within the Europeana data set might also surface. The pilot showed how information from an external resource such as WikiArt can potentially be used to enrich the data that is already held in Europeana. A second test phase in February 2016 will increase the Europeana and WikiArt datasets, ensure a more precise selection and focus on paintings held in Europeana, improve matching against WikiArt, and enhance performance.Source: Project report, Europeana Cloud, Deliverable D4.3, 2016
Project(s): AthenaPlus, eCloud

See at: ISTI Repository | pro.europeana.eu | CNR ExploRA

EuropeanaLabs: An Infrastructure to Support the Development of Europeana
Aloia N., Concordia C., Meghini C., Trupiano L.
This document describes the Europeana Development and communication infrastructure, called EuropeanaLabs, built inside the EU projects Europeana and Europeana v. 2. The EuropeanaLabs consists of a number of servers, storages and communication devices; it is used to create Virtual Machines, called sandboxes, used by Europeana foundation communities. EuropeanaLabs provides a test environment, for applications and demos, to several cultural heritage and technology projects, most of them funded by EU, in addition it features a set of servers for cooperative work. In this paper we present the general architecture of the EuropeanaLabs infrastructure.Source: Bridging Between Cultural Heritage Institutions. IRCDL 2013. Communications in Computer and Information Science, edited by Catarci T.; Ferro N.; Poggi A., pp. 53–58, 2014
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-54347-0_6

See at: academic.microsoft.com | dblp.uni-trier.de | link.springer.com | link.springer.com | link.springer.com | CNR ExploRA | rd.springer.com

The Europeana linked open data pilot server
Meghini C., Aloia N., Concordia C.
The Linked Data is a set of principles and technologies providing a publishing para- digm for sharing and reusing RDF data on the Web. The Linked Data Cloud is expanding at a very high speed since 2007, when the Linked Data Project was launched. Europeana, the European Digital Library, subscribes to the view of a web of data, and the distribution of cultural heritage data is one of the main objectives established by the Europeana Strategic Plan. The paper illus- trates how Europeana publishes Linked Data, with focus on the technological approach adopted.Source: Digital Libraries and Archives. 8th Italian Research Conference. IRCDL 2012. Revised Selected Papers, edited by Agosti, Maristella and Esposito, Floriana and Ferilli, Stefano and Ferro, Nicola, pp. 241–248, 2013
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-35834-0_24

See at: academic.microsoft.com | dblp.uni-trier.de | link.springer.com | CNR ExploRA | rd.springer.com | www.springerlink.com

Il sogno di Tim
Aloia N., Concordia C., Meghini C., Trupiano L.
The first part of this paper describes the motivation, the main features and the current implementation state of the Linked Open data Framework. In conclusions we try to outline some possible development lines in order to build the Semantic Web paradigm defined by Tim Berners Lee.Source: Sapere (Bari) marzo/aprile 2013 (2013): 16–23.

See at: CNR ExploRA | www.edizionidedalo.it

Designing and implementing a user-generated content service for Europeana.
Aloia N., Concordia C., Meghini C.
The paper presents an overview of the user generated content service that the ASSETS Best Practice Network has designed, implemented and evaluated with the user for Europeana, the European digital library. The service will allow Europeana users to contribute to the contents of the digital library in several different ways, such as uploading simple media objects along with their descriptions, annotating existing objects, or enriching existing descriptions. The user and the system requirements are outlined first, and used to derive the basic principles underlying the service. A conceptual model of the entities required for the realization of the service and a general sketch of the system architecture are also given, and used to illustrate the basic workflow of some important operations.Source: Conference on Information Technologies for Performing Arts, Media Access and Entertainment, pp. 126–130, Florence, Italy, 7-9 May 2012

See at: CNR ExploRA | www.eclap.eu

2012 Journal article Open Access

Meeting People's Needs in a Fully Interoperable Domotic Environment
Miori V., Russo D., Concordia C.
The key idea underlying many Ambient Intelligence (AmI) projects and applications is context awareness, which is based mainly on their capacity to identify users and their locations. The actual computing capacity should remain in the background, in the periphery of our awareness, and should only move to the center if and when necessary. Computing thus becomes 'invisible', as it is embedded in the environment and everyday objects. The research project described herein aims to realize an Ambient Intelligence-based environment able to improve users' quality of life by learning their habits and anticipating their needs. This environment is part of an adaptive, context-aware framework designed to make today's incompatible heterogeneous domotic systems fully interoperable, not only for connecting sensors and actuators, but for providing comprehensive connections of devices to users. The solution is a middleware architecture based on open and widely recognized standards capable of abstracting the peculiarities of underlying heterogeneous technologies and enabling them to co-exist and interwork, without however eliminating their differences. At the highest level of this infrastructure, the Ambient Intelligence framework, integrated with the domotic sensors, can enable the system to recognize any unusual or dangerous situations and anticipate health problems or special user needs in a technological living environment, such as a house or a public space.Source: Sensors (Basel) 12 (2012): 6802–6824. doi:10.3390/s120606802
DOI: 10.3390/s120606802

See at: Sensors | Sensors | Sensors | Sensors | Sensors | Sensors | CNR ExploRA | www.mdpi.com

Europeana v1.0
Aloia N., Concordia C., Meghini C.
The Europeana v1.0 is a Thematic Network project funded under the Commission's eContentplus programme 2008 and is the successor network to the EDLnet thematic network that created the EDL Foundation and the Europeana prototype. The goal of the project is to develop an operational service and solve key operational issues related to the implementation and functioning of the European Digital Library. The work will include also a business development operation to ensure that a steady stream of content is made available in the Digital Library.Source: Digital Libraries and Archives. 7th Italian Research Conference, IRCDL 2011, Pisa, Italy, January 20-21, 2011. Revised Papers, edited by Maristella Agosti ; Floriana Esposito ; Carlo Meghini ; Nicola Orio, pp. 127–129. Berlin/Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2011
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-27302-5_16

See at: link.springer.com | CNR ExploRA

2011 Report Open Access

ASSETS - The ASSETS API
Briguglio L. Gordea S., Lindley A., Tzoannos E., Meghini C., Cardillo F. A., Esuli A., Falchi F., Ceccarelli D., Bolettieri P., Aloia N., Concordia C., Valdes V., Lopez F., Martinez J. M., Bescos J., Castells P., Garcia M. A., Paytuvi O., Lazaridis M., Beloued A., Spyratos N., Sugibuchi T.
This is a technical document detailing the ASSETS architecture and API for each component. It integrates and extends results of the first year mainly from T2.0.4 "Platform design and implementation guidelines" and T2.0.5 "API Specifications", but it introduces technical aspects of all the software services defined, analysed, implemented and tested in ASSETS WP2.1, WP2.2, WP2.3, WP2.4, WP2.5 and WP3.2. This document provides the following information regarding the Assets Services: The rationale behind the service choices; The approach and methodology of proposed solutions; The services description and the definition of their interfaces (APIs); The data models and data flows exchanged between services. This documentation is the basis for the development activities, because identifies the components, their responsibilities data models and interfaces. Through the iteration, as yet occurred during the first year, the data models and interfaces will be refined and enriched with further details. More, even if an improved User Interface is expected on next months, yet in this document ASSETS is able to present some anticipations with preliminary results and mock-ups, carried out during this year. Those are shown for better describing and clarifying how the ASSETS services are/will be used for improving access and usability of Europeana.Source: Project report, ASSETS, Deliverable D2.0.4, 2011
Project(s): ASSETS

See at: ISTI Repository | CNR ExploRA