EAGER: Open XD Metrics on Demand Value Analytics

Indiana University, Bloomington IN

Investigators

Abstract

Understanding the value of campus-based cyberinfrastructure (CI) to the institutions that invest in such CI is intrinsically difficult. Given today's financial pressure, administrative support for campus-based CI centers offering resources to local campus users is under constant budgetary pressure. This is partly due to the difficulty in obtaining quantitative metrics that clearly demonstrate the utility of investment in campus CI centers in enhancing scientific research and the financial aspects of enhanced competitive ability in seeking funding for research. This proposal seeks to implement a set of highly experimental modules to be added to the existing CI metrics tool eXtreme Data Metrics on Demand (XDMoD). These modules are intended to provide a means for assessing campus-based CI investment in scientific terms, as measured in publications, and in financial terms, as measured in grant income from researchers who use CI as compared to those who do not. The modules, tentatively called Open XDMoD Value Analytics, will present a view of financial, collaboration, and publication data, showing "return-on-investment" metrics in relation to CI usage. The goal of the work is to generalize these modules to work with a variety of funding and publication information sources, and incorporate them into the open source distribution of Open XDMoD.