Our Terminology
Our Terminology
National cyberinfrastructure (CI) initiatives have been around over three decades, and a significant amount of jargon and acronyms have accrued over the years. Here we clarify some of the terms and acronyms you may find throughout your experience with ACCESS. We encourage recommendations for edits or inclusions; please send any and all suggestions through our feedback form.
AARC - ACCESS Allocations Review Committee
See Reviewers and Get Involved with ACCESS
Accelerate ACCESS - One of the four allocation project types
ACCESS - Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Support & Services
See ACCESS Homepage, About ACCESS, and Get Started
Action - Options that researchers have to manage their allocations
See Use Credits: Overview and Manage My Projects (note: please check that this is correct, I don’t have anything on the “manage my project” page - SF)
Allocation - A set amount of units on a resource
More information on About Allocation page
AMIE - Account Management Information Exchange, a communications protocol
(Note: I can’t find a good page about this - SF)
API - Application Programming Interface
See Operations API and ACCESS Operations API
Campus Champions - Longstanding group who assist local researchers to leverage CI
CI - Cyberinfrastructure
Credits - ACCESS credits; universal currency that can be exchanged for resource units“Digital Ecosystem” page on Wikipedia
DevOps - Software Development and Operations
For more detailed definition, see “DevOps” Wikipedia page (Note: I could not find a really relevant page on the ACCESS website - SF)
Ecosystem - Connecting processes; delineating boundaries between NSF programs
See Acknowledging ACCESS; for a more detailed definition see “Digital Ecosystem” Wikipedia page (Note: I could not find a really relevant source for this item on the ACCESS website - SF)
Exchange - The action of requesting a conversion of ACCESS Credits to resource units
See Managing Allocations: Overview, Use Credits: Overview, Manage My Projects, and Exchange Calculator (Note: please check that the “Manage My Projects” page is correct, I don’t have anything on that page - SF)
Extension - A modification to the end date of an allocation
Gateway - Community-developed integrated set of tools, applications, and data
See Science Gateways
Innovative Pilot - A solicitation requirement to enhance the future of allocations
See About Allocations, Organization, and ACCESS: Advancing Innovation (Note: these pages are the best I could find - SF)
Job - A unit of work or execution on a computing platform
See What Gets Measured Gets Improved (Note: this page is the best I could find - SF)
Marketplace - Where researchers and resource providers interact
Metrics - ACCESS awardee for Monitoring and Measuring Services
On-ramps - One of the Innovative Pilots under Allocations
See About Allocations, ACCESS: Advancing Innovation, and ACCESS: Ramps (PDF p.7, “On-Ramps” slide) (Note: these pages are the best I could find - SF)
Opportunity - See “Project Type”
ORCiD - Code to uniquely identify authors and contributors of scholarly communication
Project Type - A specific level of allocation; also referred to as “Opportunity”
Proposal - A composed written request for an ACCESS allocation
See Prepare Requests: Overview, and “Prepare Request” pages for each individual project type: Explore, Discover, Accelerate, and Maximize
Resource Provider (RP) - Representatives and operators of services and hardware
Reviewers - Those who provide their expertise and guidance on allocation proposals
See ACCESS Allocations, Review Criteria, and Reviewers
Supplement - A request action for additional credits or resource units
Support - ACCESS awardee for End User Support Services
See ACCESS Support
Ticket - A formal help support request
See Open a Ticket and ACCESS Ticket System
Transfer - A request action to move resource units to another target resource
UI - User Interface
See About XRAS Software, Tools, and “User Interface” Wikipedia page (Note: there is not any really relevant source for this item on the ACCESS website - SF)
Usage - Reporting of resource unit consumption
See Allocations Usage (Note: please check because I can’t see this page - SF), XDMoD, What Gets Measured Gets Improved, Metrics—More Than Numbers, and ACCESS Allocations Map (click on “Usage”)
Variable Marketplace - One of the Innovative Pilots under Allocations
See ACCESS: Advancing Innovation and ACCESS: RAMPS slide deck (PDF p.7 “1. Variable Marketplace”) (Note: these pages are the best I could find - SF)
XDMoD - A tool developed by ACCESS Metrics to monitor resource performance
See XDMoD
XRAS - eXtensible Resource Allocation Service
XSEDE - eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment, the predecessor to ACCESS
See XSEDE Services Being Retired on 8/31, XSEDE Archives, and Advancing to ACCESS; for more information on how to make a transition from XSEDE to ACCESS, see Acknowledging ACCESS, Researchers and Educators, and Managing Allocations: Overview