Collaborative Applications

Leader
German CANCIO MELIA
Deputy
Jose Benito GONZALEZ LOPEZ

The Collaborative Applications Group is responsible for delivering software and services enabling collaborative work. This includes open science and institutional repositories, digital library and preservation technology, event management solutions, e-mail and groupware services, video conferencing, webcast and recording, as well as engineering software.

Conferencing Technology (IT-CA-CTE)

Section Leader: Pedro Ferreira

The Conferencing Technology section provides collaboration applications and services which are essential to the organization of physical, virtual and hybrid events at CERN. Those software products and services aim to provide:

  • Enterprise chat platform for CERN personnel and communities (Mattermost);
  • Event organization and management, through Indico, which powers CERN’s own event repository as well as smaller indico-based services such as Burotel, ILC Agenda, Indico @ PSI and Indico @ JACoW; as well as newdle, an enterprise event scheduling tool;
  • Transcoding of video files between formats, on-demand;
  • Transcription and Translation of speech audio into readable text, optimized for CERN’s complex technical vocabulary and accents;
  • Videoconferencing (Zoom) for CERN personnel and collaborations, including application support services such as the Central Encoder System (CES) and RAVEM;
  • Webcast and Recording of events inside and outside the organization;

The section also provides support and documentation to users of its services and software products.

Groupware and Engineering Services (IT-CA-GES)

Section Leader: Thomas Baron

The Groupware and Engineering Services section facilitates collective working and engineering tasks for CERN personnel. For this purpose, it provides its users with

  • A Groupware solution comprising an email service as well as management of personal calendar, contacts and tasks
  • An Engineering software service for applications in the areas of electronics design, mechanical design, mathematics and multiphysics simulation

The section is in charge of selecting, deploying, configuring, integrating, and operating the groupware solution. The section is in charge of the budget management, procurement, license management for the supported engineering applications, coordinates their packaging and installation and the provision of the necessary infrastructure by IT. It also provides support to users of the above services.

Institutional Repositories (IT-CA-IR)

Section Leader: Jose Benito Gonzalez Lopez

The Institutional Repositories (IR) section is in charge of designing, architecting, and operating several Institutional Repositories including their long-term preservation features. The section is responsible for:

  • CERN Document Server (CDS): CERN's institutional repository archiving all important documents and, in general, all digital objects, such as scientific documents, multimedia content, administration documents, and more. Its goal is to preserve the scientific and historical content of CERN.
  • CDS Videos: provides specific workflows for the archiving and dissemination of videos produced by the CERN community.
  • CERN Library Catalogue: enables to browse and loan books and other content available at CERN library.
  • Digital Memory project: project that covers 3 areas, digitisation of analogue material (e.g. tapes), providing long-term preservation solutions, and enabling support tools for the archival of individual’s documents.
  • CERN Open Data Portal: access point to a growing range of data produced through the research performed at CERN and beyond.

Open Science Infrastructure (IT-CA-OSI)

Section Leader: Lars Holm Nielsen

The Open Science Infrastructure section provides Open Science services and technology platforms for research data management (RDM) and reproducible research data analyses. This includes notably:

  • InvenioRDM, the underlying software platform for Zenodo and other digital repositories at CERN, with an open source community of more than 25 international partners co-developing the platform.
  • REANA, a reusable and reproducible research data analysis platform that allows researchers to run containerised computational workflows on remote compute clouds. REANA complements digital repository solutions with an "analysis engine" features in order to ensure future reuse of preserved content.
  • Zenodo.org, world's largest general-purpose research data repository enabling everyone to participate in Open Science thanks to a simple-to-use platform for sharing and preserving research.
  • Open Science project delivery for externally funded projects as well as participation in Open and Reproducible Science initiatives with partner institutes and projects across scientific disciplines.