EN100-web

Special theme: Scientific Data Sharing and Re-use
Capturing the Experimental Context
via Research Objects
by Catherine Jones, Brian Matthews and Antony Wilson
Data publication and sharing are becoming accepted parts of the data ecosystem to support
research, and this is becoming recognised in the field of ‘facilities science’. We define facilities
science as that undertaken at large-scale scientific facilities, in particular neutron and synchrotron
x-ray sources, although similar characteristics can also apply to large telescopes, particle physics
institutes, environmental monitoring centres and satellite observation platforms. In facilities
science, a centrally managed set of specialized and high value scientific instruments is made
accessible to users to run experiments which require the particular characteristics of those
instruments
The institutional nature of the facilities,
with the provision of support infrastructure
and staff, has allowed the facilities
to support their user communities by
systematically providing data acquisition,
management, cataloguing and
access. This has been successful to date;
however, as the expectations of facilities
users and funders develop, this approach
has its limitations in the support of validation
and reuse, and thus we propose to
evolve the focus of the support provided.
A research project produces many outputs
during its lifespan; some are formally
published, some relate to the
administration of the project and some
will relate to the stages in the process.
Changes in culture are encouraging the
re-use of existing data which means that
data should be kept, discoverable and
useable, for the long term. For example,
a scientist wishing to reuse data may
have discovered the information about
the data from a journal article; but to be
able to reuse this data they will also need
to understand information about the
analysis done to produce the data
behind the publication. This activity
may happen years after the original
experiment has been undertaken and to
achieve this, the data digital object and
its context must be preserved from the
start.
We propose that instead of focussing on
traditional artefacts such as data or publications
as the unit of dissemination,
we elevate the notion of experiment or
‘investigation’ as an aggregation of the
artefacts and supporting metadata surrounding
a particular experiment on a
facility to a first class object of discourse,
which can be managed, published
and cited in its own right. By providing
this aggregate ‘research object’,
we can provide information at the right
level to support validation and reuse, by
capturing the context for a given digital
object and also preserving that context
over the long term for effective preservation.
In the SCAPE project , STFC
has built on the notion of a Research
Object which enables the aggregation of
information about research artefacts.
These are usually represented as a
Linked Data graph; thus RDF is used as
the underlying model and representation,
with a URI used to uniquely identify
artefacts, and OAI-ORE used as a
aggregation container, with standard
vocabularies for provenance citation
and for facilities investigations. Within
the SCAPE project, the focus of the
research lifecycle is the experiment
undertaken at the ISIS Neutron
Spallation Facility. By following the
lifecycle of a successful beam line
application, we can collect all the artefacts
and objects related to it, with their
appropriate relationships. As this is
strongly related to allocation of the
resources of the facility, this is a highly
appropriate intellectual unit for the
facility; the facility want to record and
evaluate the scientific results arising
from the allocation of its scarce
resources.
Figure 1: Schematic of an Investigation Research Object.
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ERCIM NEWS 100 January 2015