We present the results of the first four years of the European research project SCIEnce (www.symbolic-computation.org), which aims to provide key infrastructure for symbolic com-putation research. A primary outcome of the project is that we have developed a new way of combining computer algebra systems using the Symbolic Computation Software Compos-ability Protocol (SCSCP), in which both protocol messages and data are encoded in the OpenMath format. We describe SCSCP middleware and APIs, outline some implementations for various Computer Algebra Systems (CAS), and show how SCSCP-compliant components may be combined to solve sci-entific problems that can not be solved within a single CAS, or may be organised into a system for distributed parallel computations.