{"id":7416,"date":"2020-05-26T20:45:24","date_gmt":"2020-05-26T18:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.go-fair.org\/?page_id=7416"},"modified":"2020-05-27T09:50:13","modified_gmt":"2020-05-27T07:50:13","slug":"materials-cloud","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.go-fair.org\/implementation-networks\/overview\/materials-cloud\/","title":{"rendered":"Materials Cloud"},"content":{"rendered":"

Active GO FAIR Implementation Network<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>The Materials Cloud IN starts from the belief that while researchers in the field are aware and supportive of the principles of FAIR data and Open Science, the hurdle to make their work FAIR is typically too large to overcome without the suitable tools to assist. We are committed therefore to provide such tools to researchers and help them in adopting best practices and common formats. The effort to make simulations FAIR cannot be applied \u201ca posteriori\u201d after these have been run and published. Instead, tools should assist researchers in proper data stewardship that begins before data is even collected, and continues while they are performing their simulations, keeping track in a fully automated way of the computational workflows and the full provenance of the data generated. Thanks to FAIR automatic provenance tracking, much higher guarantees of reproducibility can be offered with respect to recreating the provenance information at the end. With this approach, data access according to the FAIR principles becomes straightforward.<\/p>\n

Tools<\/strong>
\nOur Materials Cloud IN represents an unique network of partners in the field of Materials Science. The distinguishing feature of our network is that we are not only interested in collecting data and making it accessible but also in providing the core tools needed to make computational research open, reproducible and FAIR:
\n1) open-source automated provenance-tracking workflow engines;
\n2) robust and open turn-key workflows for the computation of relevant materials properties;
\n3) FAIR-sharing platforms that not only make data Findable with DOIs, but provide Accessible web interfaces to them, ensure data is stored in Interoperable formats that are accepted by many different simulation codes, and help guarantee that shared data is not only Reusable but also Reproducible.<\/p>\n

Our tools are backed by a lively and diverse \u201ccritical mass\u201d community of developers of plugins for most of the codes of our scientific field, as demonstrated by the list available on the AiiDA plugin registry. Plugins are available for 50 software packages and 100 code executables (as of May 2020). These are developed not only within the framework of the supporting projects, but also by independent researchers that were captivated by the core ideas and concepts of the Materials Cloud IN.
\n
\nGoal<\/strong>
\nThe goal of the Materials Cloud IN is to provide open-source, robust and reliable tools and platforms to help researchers across the world to ensure reproducibility of computational research and FAIR sharing of the resulting data. Not only at the level of single calculations, but of the complete computational workflows that brought from the initial data to the final results. The Materials Cloud IN focuses currently on Computational Materials Science, but provides tools that can potentially be extended to other disciplines.<\/p>\n

The Materials Cloud IN builds on top of a robust Open Science Platform for Computational Science, that rests on the following three pillars.
\n1) Widely-used, community-based open-source simulation engines, from local codes to massive HPC parallel codes running on supercomputers.
\n2) The open-source AiiDA materials informatics infrastructure, to manage, persist, share and reproduce complex computational workflows by automatically tracking the full provenance of data and calculations.
\n3) The Materials Cloud web platform, to enable sharing and dissemination of resources like: educational, research, and archiving tools; simulation software and services; curated and raw data.<\/p>\n

These tools help accelerate research in the field of Materials Science, with direct societal impact on fields that are present in our everyday life, like: longer-lasting and safer batteries; more efficient energy harvesting materials (e.g., solar cells, thermo-electric materials) and catalysts; novel nanomaterials, functional materials and electronic devices.<\/p>\n

Network<\/strong>
\nThe vision of the Materials Cloud IN nucleated in 2010, with the FET MARVEL Flagship Proposal, and took shape in 2013, with the Swiss MARVEL NCCR, and in 2015, with the H2020 MaX Centre of Excellence, that was later renewed in 2018 as the official European Centre of Excellence dedicated to Materials Science.<\/p>\n

Currently, the Materials Cloud IN is supported by a consortium of partners and is open to further partnerships. These partners include the Swiss MARVEL NCCR, the European Centre of Excellence MaX, the swissuniversities P-5 Materials Cloud project, the European H2020 MarketPlace project, the European H2020 Intersect project the Swiss Platform for Advanced Scientific Computing PASC, and the EPFL Open Science OSSCAR project, involving currently a total of over 200 researchers. An updated list of partners can be found on the Materials Cloud Partners page.<\/p>\n

In addition, we are among the founding partners of the OPTiMaDe consortium, aiming at making materials databases interoperational by developing common formats and a common REST API specification.<\/p>\n

Objectives<\/strong><\/p>\n