The D4Science experience on virtual research environment development

Today, complex research challenges, often based on the analysis of a large amount of data, require multidisciplinary collaboration and appropriate communication and sharing of data, processes and outcomes. Technologies and large-scale infrastructures provide stakeholders with computing capacity and data services to perform unprecedented levels of data-driven scientific activities. This opens the way to science gateways and virtual research environments supporting researchers in scientific and educational activities. This article describes our extensive experience with the Virtual Research Environments (VRE) operated by the D4Science infrastructure. It presents how this infrastructure supports their development, their basic functionalities and how they are easily customised to serve the needs of specific user communities. It also describes how they are used in real contexts. The article concludes by reporting how VREs are now progressively used as valuable instruments to support open science and how this role might become more relevant in the future.