Publishing as a first-class service in virtual research environments: the D4Science catalogue

Virtual Research Environments (VREs) and Science Gateways support collaborative and data-intensive research by integrating data access, computing, and analytical services. However, publishing research outputs often remains external to these environments, requiring researchers to transfer datasets, workflows, software, and other artifacts to external repositories. This separation introduces friction and limits timely sharing and reuse. This paper presents the D4Science Catalogue, a configurable service designed to make publishing a native capability of Virtual Research Environments. The Catalogue enables communities to publish diverse research objects together with community-defined metadata and to support discovery through both human and machine access mechanisms. Experiences from multiple deployments illustrate how integrated catalogue-based services facilitate early sharing, improve discoverability, and support FAIR research practices within science gateways.