Software Reuse Methods to Improve Technological Infrastructure for e-Science

Social computing has the potential to contribute to scientific research. Ongoing developments in information and communications technology improve capabilities for enabling scientific research, including research fostered by social computing capabilities. The recent emergence of e-Science practices has demonstrated the benefits from improvements in the technological infrastructure, or cyber-infrastructure, that has been developed to support science. Cloud computing is one example of this e-Science trend. Our own work in the area of software reuse offers methods that can be used to improve new technological development, including cloud computing capabilities, to support scientific research practices. In this paper, we focus on software reuse and its potential to contribute to the development and evaluation of information systems and related services designed to support new capabilities for conducting scientific research.