Visual access control for research ecosystems

Research ecosystems and the interactions of the participating entities can be complex. It has been shown that visualisation and network analysis can be used to provide insights into the system and the results can be utilised to facilitate management activities. Taking this approach in digital ecosystem research a step further, we propose to instrument the visualisations of a system´s structure to operationalise this information for securing access to resources in research ecosystems. To this end, we present the concept of a visual approach to manage access control for distributed research ecosystems, based on a multi-purpose collaborative graph structure. Individuals are enabled to visually interact with the graph and contribute to access control decisions by jointly modelling the environment´s structures and policies. Additionally, other administrative tasks can be instrumented to benefit from the explicit information contained in the structure. Using our approach, the burden of project management can be lightened by facilitating an integrated view of an inherently intricate environment.