embracing the (re)decentralized web for sustainable research collaboration cyberinfrastructure
Research collaborations need a new kind of cyberinfrastructure
Openness and decentralization are qualities of scientific culture and methodology that have stood the test of time. We believe that for science to continue to thrive, the cyberinfrastructure scientists use to do their research and work together should be open and decentralized too.
Reproducibility
Science only works when results can be independently reproduced. Our full-stack CI built using free and open source software can meet this stringent demand.
Sustainability
Funding for research projects comes and goes. Individual collaboration members join and depart. Researchers need a CI that can migrate between host institutions when necessary. They need a CI that makes it easy for scientists to move and share their data where they want.
Resilience
Science demands integrity and intellectual independence, and this should be reflected in its software. Researchers should truly own their data and distribute administrative control among members in a way that works for them.
Full-stack, industry standard components
DecentCI is constructed from well supported, industry standard open source products. Terraform. OpenStack. Kubernetes. ArgoCD. Components are modular and flexible, providing the freedom collaborations need to customize their infrastructure.
Tools & Services
We have curated a suite of free and open source tools and services to meet the essential needs of most scientific research collaborations. Their deployment configurations are optimized for performance and to support integrations. There is no “one size fits all” here: the list of deployed applications is 100% extensible.
Nextcloud
File storage, file sharing, group calendars, and a wealth of other capabilities are provided by a deployment of a Nextcloud server. Taking the description from their own website, Nextcloud is a “self-hosted productivity platform that keeps you in control”, and that is “the most popular self-hosted collaboration solution for tens of millions of users at thousands of organizations across the globe”.
Discourse
Discourse is a highly popular forum software and is used by countless projects for their community discussion platform. It offers a myriad well-crafted features and capabilities and can accommodate a wide range of use cases. Discourse is thoughtfully designed to support dynamic communities.
JupyterHub
Jupyter notebooks have become an essential tool for researchers across many fields in science. JupyterHub brings the power of notebooks to groups of users, giving them access to computational environments and resources without the burden of installation and maintenance tasks. Researchers can share code and data in a consistent development environment.
WordPress
Project webpages hosted by WordPress take advantage of its rich CMS capabilities and large ecosystem of plugins to make adding and updating content easy enough for anyone. WordPress lets you distribute the responsibility of maintaining a group website.
HedgeDoc
HedgeDoc is a light-weight, Google Doc style collaborative document editor suitable for meeting notes, brainstorming sessions, or even an ad-hoc wiki system. It is simple to invite affiliates without an account to work on a doc by sharing a link.
Matrix & Element
Matrix is an amazing and rapidly growing project providing real-time, decentralized messaging and teleconferencing. It is being adopted by a growing list of large organizations including the French government and Germany’s national health care system. Matrix can bridge messages between Slack and Microsoft Teams, and many other isolated platforms.
Identity and Access Management
Our unified authentication system is based on a Keycloak server connected to NCSA’s CILogon service, which acts as a broker to a large set of identity providers (IdP). Collaborators select one of their existing IdPs that they prefer, so there is no need for yet another username and password. Collaborators enjoy single-sign-on across all applications.
Because all of the tools and services only see Keycloak, you can swap the CILogon service with any other IdP without reconfiguring any of the applications.
This approach embraces decentralization in that no single identity provider can control access for an individual. It also allows collaborators to seamlessly switch their IdP as necessary; for example, when a graduate student accepts a postdoc position at another university.
Showcase
Our CI is in active use or has been used in the past by a range of scientific projects and collaborations.
Dark Energy Survey
South Pole Telescope
MUSES
Free and Open Source
DecentCI is free and open source software. Join our developer community and help us build the next generation of research collaboration cyberinfrastructure.
Connect with us!
We’d love for you to stop by our community forum or our Matrix space and say hello.
NCSA helped build the original web
The Mosaic browser developed at NCSA in 1993 connected people across the globe in a way never seen before. We continue that innovative tradition, providing tools to help researchers unlock the web’s potential for modern scientific collaboration.