In today’s rapidly evolving research landscape, the collaboration among scientists from diverse disciplines has become increasingly crucial for addressing complex societal challenges such as climate change, global sustainability on food, water, and land use driven by growing population, rising per capita incomes, to name a few. Science gateways address this need by providing user-friendly access to research infrastructure, data collections, lab instruments, and tools for science and engineering researchers, educators, and students. These gateways streamline collaboration, foster open science practices, and shield researchers from the intricacies of the underlying infrastructure. They allow for smooth data sharing, reproducibility, and transparency, advancing collaborative research and open science.

In the last 15 years, quite a few mature science gateway frameworks and Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) have been developed to ease the development of instances of science gateways, and each of them has its own communities, strengths, and foci. The Gateways Central effort of SGX3 (the NSF Center of Excellence for Science Gateways) has over 600 entries reflecting the diversity of science gateways and their application areas. The connection to multiple computing infrastructures, including local, distributed, and volunteer systems, is supported by various mature frameworks and APIs. Many diverse communities use some of these. Hubzero, TAPIS, and Galaxy are examples of complete frameworks allowing a community manager and/or administrator to set up a science gateway. TAPIS offers RESTful web services for efficiently developing a science gateway with diverse services and support for various programming languages. RESTful services and parts of user interface implementations of widely used open-source science gateways such as CIPRES are re-used for further implementations. Hubzero and Galaxy provide graphical web interfaces for interacting with tools and sharing data. All aforementioned frameworks or services support local computing infrastructures, distributed computing infrastructures, data-driven research, and team collaboration capabilities.

SGX3 is committed to supporting interdisciplinary teams in their research endeavors. It offers a range of services, including expertise in designing and developing science gateways, usability and sustainability consulting, gap analysis, training opportunities, and an annual conference for networking and knowledge exchange. Through SGX3, interdisciplinary teams can leverage science gateways to achieve several key objectives: 

Streamlined collaboration: Science gateways provide user-friendly interfaces and essential tools, fostering effective communication and joint problem-solving among researchers from diverse backgrounds.  

Enhanced resource access: Resources are readily available through a single access point, eliminating the need for researchers to spend time locating and learning diverse tools specific to each discipline.

Innovation tailored to their needs: Existing frameworks provide a solid foundation upon which tailored solutions can be built. This not only accelerates scientific progress but also promotes a spirit of collaboration and knowledge sharing within the research community. 

By empowering researchers to transcend disciplinary boundaries, science gateways facilitate and accelerate research progress, effectively addressing complex scientific challenges, and achieving their research objectives more efficiently.

This presentation will provide insights into the intersection of open science and interdisciplinary team science, showcasing how science gateways serve as facilitators for collaboration, innovation, and inclusivity in research endeavors.