From artifacts to aggregations: Modeling scientific life cycles on the semantic Web

Abstract

In the process of scientific research, many information objects are generated, all of which may remain valuable indefinitely. However, artifacts such as instrument data and associated calibration information may have little value in isolation; their meaning is derived from their relationships to each other. Individual artifacts are best represented as components of a life cycle that is specific to a scientific research domain or project. Current cataloging practices do not describe objects at a sufficient level of granularity nor do they offer the globally persistent identifiers necessary to discover and manage scholarly products with World Wide Web standards. The Open Archives Initiative's Object Reuse and Exchange data model (OAI‐ORE) meets these requirements. We demonstrate a conceptual implementation of OAI‐ORE to represent the scientific life cycles of embedded networked sensor applications in seismology and environmental sciences. By establishing relationships between publications, data, and contextual research information, we illustrate how to obtain a richer and more realistic view of scientific practices. That view can facilitate new forms of scientific research and learning. Our analysis is framed by studies of scientific practices in a large, multidisciplinary, multi‐university science and engineering research center, the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing.

Scientific Social Objects: The Social Objects and Multidimensional Network of the myExperiment Website

“…• Treating these objects as aggregations is an important step [10] and packs have demonstrated a significant role in workflow reuse and curation, The Wf4Ever project (www.wf4ever-project.org) is building on the experience with myExperiment, further developing the notion of Research Objects in this context and focusing on workflow preservation. Wf4Ever also features an important strand of activity in recommender systems, which could draw heavily on the multidimensional network in order to assist users in their interactions with scientific social objects.…”

Redesigning the DOE Data Explorer to Embed Dataset Relationships at the Point of Search and to Reflect Landing Page Organization

“…This challenge mirrors what previous research has found regarding the difficulty of organizing data in ways that make is useful for others (MacMillan 2014). We have determined that collaborating with our data clients and depending on their domain-specific knowledge in creating data records and defining subsequent linkages is the best solution, echoed by Pepe et al (2009) in previous research.…”

“…ARM has created relationships between the DOI of the instrument's datastream and the unique citations generated each time slices of the data are obtained. Like the work done by Pepe et al (2009), working with ARM data owners, we could consider leveraging this organizational structure in DDE, creating Collection records for each instrument. Datastreams from each instrument could become Dataset records and have individual DOIs.…”

“…A project using environmental sensing research done at the Center for Embedded Networked Sensing worked to address the challenge of creating better linkages by looking at the lifecycle of the research and capturing artifacts such as instrument data and associated calibration information. These data may have little value in isolation, but high value for researchers trying to reuse the environmental sensing data (Pepe et al 2009). There are similar difficulties in the biological sciences, as the vast amount of data produced 'introduces significant obstacles in data organization .…”

Knowledge infrastructures in science: data, diversity, and digital libraries

“…When used in the context of scholarly communication, life cycles may refer to stages of research projects, from origin of the ideas through to publication and dissemination. These life cycles intersect, in that different research products are created and used in each stage of research [97]. Despite the wide use of the term, "life cycle" remains problematic as it suggests that research proceeds stepwise with a beginning, middle, and end, rather than iterating through many steps [12,24].…”