e-Science Projects Projects
- Science and Education Network
The RCTS – Science, Technology and Society Network is a computation network linking scientific and education research institutions. It also provides the connection to the international research and education network and is operated by the FCCN - Foundation for National Scientific Computation (site in Portuguese), a not-for-profit association whose activities are for the most part funded by Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC). The Science and Technology Foundation (FCT), Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC) , CRUP - Council of Vice-Chancellors of Portuguese Universities and LNEC - National Civil Engineering Laboratory, IP are associates.
- e-U Virtual Campus
The e-U Virtual Campus project was designed and is coordinated by Knowledge Society Agency (UMIC), with technical support from the FCCN - Foundation for National Scientific Computation (site in Portuguese). The project has created an extensive wireless network incorporating the country’s universities and polytechnic institutes into a single virtual campus with more than 5,000 access points through interinstitutional roaming, and also including services, content and applications made available to all the institutions.
- National GRID Initiative
The National GRID Initiative for research and development was launched on 29 April 2006 to take advantage of the economic opportunities created by GRID computing, as envisaged in the Connecting Portugal Programme.
- Volunteer Computing IBERCIVIS
IBERCIVIS (site in Portuguese) is an initiative of Volunteer Distributed Computing for Scientific Applications launched in 2009 in cooperation with Spain, following the cooperation agreements on e-Science signed in the Portugal-Spain Summits.
- b-on Knowledge Library Online
The Portuguese b-on Knowledge Library Online provides permanent unlimited access to full texts of more than 16,750 international academic publications from 16 publishers to research and higher educational institutions, through subscriptions with these publishers which have been negotiated at a national level.
- Open Access Repositories
The Open Access Scientific Repository of Portugal (RCAAP) is designed to be used freely by any institutions within the higher educational or scientific systems to house their repository while maintaining their own individual corporate identity and, furthermore, to bring together within one single meta data system the open access academic repositories which exist in Portugal.
- Linguateca
Linguateca is a distributed resource centre for the computational processing of the Portuguese language which has the aim of:
- Facilitating access to existing resources, through developing network access services, and maintaining a portal which provides useful information.
- Developing resources considered more urgent in cooperation with interested parties in a harmonious manner.
- Organising joint evaluations which involve the community as a whole.
- VoIP and Video Conferencing
In 2009, a national VoIP service supported in the National Research and Education Network, RCTS, was made available to the whole public scientific and higher education system that, given its large size, became the largest VoIP network in the country. The services developed involve extending the possibilities of holding teleconferences and video conferences from computers in the institutions of scientific system and national higher education that can be easily activated by the users, facilitating remote collaboration within the whole system.