Science gateways, Virtual Research Environments (VREs) and e-Laboratories / Virtual Labs (VLs) are a community-specific sets of tools, applications, and data collections that are well integrated via a web portal or an app, providing convenient and consistent access to distributed resources, services, data and instruments. They extend the power of research infrastructures and encourage wider audiences. They improve usability, automate routine tasks and offer ramps that enable users to progress to more sophisticated scientific methods. As a result they increase the use of advanced capabilities delivered by computational and data platforms, clouds and e-Infrastructures. The complexity of the underlying infrastructure is hidden from the end-users by carefully crafted interfaces, abstractions and automated mappings. The benefits they deliver increases dramatically as the wealth and diversity of data grows. They combine to deliver new strategies for tackling deep science, sophisticated engineering and global challenges. For this they need to foster collaboration among globally dispersed communities, spanning multiple disciplines and levels of experience. They provide stability for established practices and well-polished methods. Simultaneously, they stimulate invention and new solutions by exposing new power in understandable forms.

The workshop will bring together researchers and scientists from different research domains, along with developers, to discuss problems and solutions in the area, to identify new issues, to shape future directions for research, foster the exchange of ideas, standards and common requirements and push towards the wider adoption of science gateways.

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