1. February 2009

2. Research Infrastructures (incl. e-infrastructures) are: Facilities, resources, and related services used by the scientific community for Conducting leading-edge research Knowledge transmission, knowledge exchanges and knowledge preservation Today Research Infrastructures include Major scientific equipment Scientific collections, archives, structured information ICT-based infrastructures Europe has a long-standing tradition of excellence

3. Growing use of the e-infrastructure: the case of GÉANT

4. Some thoughts… lInformation is NOT knowledge; knowledge creation involves a complex process… the knowledge triangle within which research infrastructures are key elements ResearchEducation Innovation Research infrastructures Knowledge «industry»

5. European RIs are faced with a wide spectrum of issues lGlobally unique to Regionally distributed; lMany stakeholders (from ministries to researchers); lLack of funding (public and private) to face increasing cost / complexity of RIs; lNeed to improve the efficiency of research services; Underlying and growing use of e-infrastructures; Integrating datasets and models; lSingle countries do not have the critical mass: a need for cooperation; lOpportunities but difficulties of interaction between researchers and other stakeholders (e.g. statisticians?)

6. The case of Social Sciences & Humanities CESSDA & remote access to Official Statistics DARIAH SHARE CLARIN 5 Projects in development ESFRI European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures

7. CESSDA www.nsd.uib.no/cessda Council of European Social Science Data Archives Distributed infrastructure providing efficient data services and facilitating access of researchers to high quality data CESSDA includes 20 European social sciences data archives; exists since over thirty years; holds some 25,000 data collections The CESSDA Preparatory Phase aims at enabling the transition of CESSDA from an informal grouping of data archives to a formally constituted European Research Infrastructure (ERI)

8. Next call for Proposals under FP7 (research) lOpen to Integrating Activities (I3), i.e. networking, joint research and transnational access / research services; lOpening Sept 09 (closing early Dec 09) allowing first contracts by second half 2010; EC support for 3 to 4 years; up to 10 M funding; lTargeted approach: for example, two topics: European Social Science Data Archives and remote access to Official Statistics; Experts recommend collaboration between CESSDA & Official Statistics; Integrating datasets / models for analysis, design, development of economic, social & other policies.

9. For further information ESFRI on CORDIS http://cordis.europa.eu/esfri/ FP7 and Capacities Specific Programme http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/capacities/ Research Infrastructures on CORDIS (FP6) http://cordis.europa.eu/infrastructures/ Research Infrastructures in Europa http://ec.europa.eu/research/infrastructures