Science Gateways with SciGaP Services

The goal of the Science Gateways Platform as a service (SciGaP.org) project is to provide core services for building and hosting science gateways. Over the last two years, SciGaP services have been used to build and host over twenty science gateways. Hosted gateways include campus gateways that focus on providing cyberinfrastructure for university computing facilities, domain gateways that target a particular field of science, and science gateways that provide “software as a service” for newly developed applications. These gateways serve multiple purposes and audiences. Campus gateways seek to increase the efficient usage of campus computing facilities by a wider range of users for a diverse set of applications. Domain gateways leverage national cyberinfrastructure to deliver well-known scientific applications as services that target a specific field of research. Developers of new scientific applications who seek to make their software available to a larger audience without going through the traditional packaging, release, and support cycles for downloadable software constitute the third type of gateway. Supporting education and classroom usage as well as research is an important goal for all types of gateways.