Giuseppe Andronico, Valeria Ardizzone, Roberto Barbera · Bruce Becker, Riccardo Bruno, Antonio Calanducci, Diego Carvalho, Leandro Ciuffo, Marco Fargetta, Emidio Giorgio Giuseppe La Rocca, Alberto Masoni, Marco Paganoni · Federico Ruggieri, Diego Scardaci

Published online: 24 March 2011
© Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract. In the last 10 years, a new way of doing science is spreading in the world thank to the development of virtual research communities across many geographic and administrative boundaries.
Avirtual research community is awidely dispersed group of researchers and associated scientific instruments working together in a common virtual environment. This new kind of scientific environment, usually addressed as a “collaboratory”, is based on the availability of high-speed networks and broadband access, advanced virtual tools and Grid-middleware technologies which, altogether, are the elements of the e-Infrastructures. The European Commission has heavily invested in promoting this new way of collaboration among scientists funding several international projects with the aim of creating e-Infrastructures to enable
the European Research Area and connect the European researchers with their colleagues
based in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In this paper we describe the actual status of these e- Infrastructures and present a complete picture of the virtual research communities currently using them. Information on the scientific domains and on the applications supported are provided together with their geographic distribution.