CIML Community Portal

Summary of the Roundtable Discussion

October 24, 2008
George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia
Room A, 3^rd Floor, Johnson Center Building
cimlvin@louisville.edu
http://www.cimlcommunity.org

• Main page of the Workshop on Building CI-ML Virtual Organizations
• Proceedings of the Workshop
• Workshop Program
• List of Participants
• Printable version of this annoucement (Needs Adobe Reader)

Questions and Answers

Question: What are the benefits of this organization?
Answers:

• To provide a central location for source versions of reviewed and credible software in a common format for use by the community. Published software can also be given proper credit, including credit to the authors.
• It is especially useful for people outside of the CI-ML field to more easily utilize CI-ML tools in their field.
• To allow quick communication of research. This contrasts with journals, where material can become outdated by the time it reaches the public

Question: If we have a repository with growing information/users, will computing be decentralized to avoid overwhelming computing needs?
Answer: Yes

General Comments

(From a Medical Doctor): CIML VO should be a place where outside researchers could query the possibilities of CIML with their data or problems without getting too involved. The needs of interdisciplinary applications should be addressed, and especially they could be tuned to the level of competency of a potential user.

(Anonymous): It is important to sort/evaluate information on topics for young researchers to find what they need to get involved in a topic in the CIML field. For example: searching for ‘Support Vector Machines’ on Google.Scholar yields hundreds of convoluted articles when only one or two papers are really needed for beginners.

(From Maciej A. Mazurowski): Developing a platform for professional networking between CIML Community members could significantly facilitate cooperation between different groups.

(Anonymous): There are enormous amounts of material out there so it is good to have clear definitions and categorizations of software/algorithms so it is easier to find what one is looking for.

(Anonymous): It is important to find or point to a good content so that users will come to the VO in the first place.

(From a Lawyer): Be careful to make sure that VO content being used by a VO member doesn’t cause significant problems. For example: a doctor uses CIML VO software to decide a drug dosage that turns out to be incorrect. Provide appropriate disclaimers. In addition, even if there is a disclaimer for misuse of the VO software, if the software being distributed is reviewed by the VO community and posted for use, a judge could ignore the disclaimer – this is an important possibility to consider. For example, can’t sell a toaster that says “use at your own risk”.

(Anonymous): For open source software, it is important to have version control – this issue is still being addressed by CIML team.

(Anonymous): Must be careful about community resources being used directly, or modified slightly and then used, for commercial products or otherwise.

(Anonymous): Perhaps some sort of metric should be used for CIML community progress?

(Anonymous): Submitters must be aware (through disclaimer?) that they are responsible for getting the rights to submit material, from boss/university/etc., before they submit it for use in community portal.

(Anonymous): To verify accuracy of code/papers/results/etc, simulation submissions should be submitted with code and results in order to repeat the experiments.