Virtual research environments: an overview and a research agenda

Virtual Research Environments are innovative, web-based, community-oriented, comprehensive, flexible, and secure working environments conceived to serve the needs of modern science. We overview the existing initiatives developing these environments by highlighting the major distinguishing features. We envisage a future where regardless of geographical location, scientists will be able to use their Web browsers to seamlessly access data, software, and processing resources that are managed by diverse systems in separate administration domains via Virtual Research Environments. We identify and discuss the major challenges that should be resolved to fully achieve the proposed vision, i.e., large-scale integration and interoperability, sustainability, and adoption.