As a service organization, the SGCI had a primary focus on what it could do to help people actively in the endeavor of creating and operating science gateways. In 2022, however, the team desired to share some of its previous experiences in the form of forward looking documents, to further catalyze the science gateways community by incorporating more participants from domain sciences, and to formalize community-driven, forward-looking blueprints for next-generation emerging needs for future science gateways. This culminated with the funding of a Cyberinfrastructure Center of Excellence called, “SGX3 - A Center of Excellence to Extend Access, Expand the Community, and Exemplify Good Practices for CI Through Science Gateways,” under NSF award #2231406.
In 2009, a team led by Nancy Wilkins-Diehr began a scoping project to understand the needs of the research community with regard to science gateways. Performed under a collaborative research project funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 2012-2015, the work involved numerous focus groups and culminated with a large-scale survey with nearly 5000 respondents. This community driven information was used to form the Science Gateways Community Institute (SGCI) in 2016 under NSF award #1547611. To date, the SGCI has served over 200 clients with a variety of services, had over 3,400 attendees to its community building events, supported 1,200 students and faculty, and produced 195 research products. The SGCI’s clientele are research rockstars, with science gateways being cited in excess of 50,000 times! Many of SGCI’s client stories are documented in our storybook
Today clients can obtain services from both entities as are most appropriate to their needs. SGX3 provides high-level complementary services on a limited basis, while SGCI is available as a partner in your science gateway endeavors for more comprehensive engagements. The two entities complement each other in the following ways:
SGX3 Funded Services
Client Funded Services
In addition, SGX3 also conducts the following community catalyzing services:
- Gateways Central site for gateway listing, software listing, and partnership formation
- SGX3 “On the Road” outreach to scientific communities where they meet
- Gateways conference series
- Blueprint Factory sessions to develop the future roadmap for Science Gateways serving new domain science needs