Internet of Samples (iSamples): Toward an interdisciplinary cyberinfrastructure for material samples

Abstract

Sampling the natural world and built environment underpins much of science, yet systems for managing material samples and associated (meta)data are fragmented across institutional catalogs, practices for identification, and discipline-specific (meta)data standards. The Internet of Samples (iSamples) is a standards-based collaboration to uniquely, consistently, and conveniently identify material samples, record core metadata about them, and link them to other samples, data, and research products. iSamples extends existing resources and best practices in data stewardship to render a cross-domain cyberinfrastructure that enables transdisciplinary research, discovery, and reuse of material samples in 21st century natural science.

Skimming for barcodes: rapid production of mitochondrial genome and nuclear ribosomal repeat reference markers through shallow shotgun sequencing

“…Further, to ensure that data derived from and associated with these biomaterials can easily be accessed and reused, we cross linked NCBI and GEOME records through Archival Resource Key (ARK) identifiers ( Kunze, 2021 ). Such best practices in data stewardship and the use of persistent identifiers across systems of record will facilitate cross-domain cyberinfrastructure and enable transdisciplinary research, discovery, and reuse of material samples and their derived data ( Davies et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Finally, to increase discoverability and data access, specimen and sequence metadata need to be linked through persistent digital identifiers across systems of record ( Riginos et al, 2020 ). These best practices in data stewardship are necessary to support cross-domain cyberinfrastructure to enable transdisciplinary research, discovery and reuse of material samples and their derived data ( Davies et al, 2021 ).…”

Towards Globally Unique Identification of Physical Samples: Governance and Technical Implementation of the IGSN Global Sample Number

“…However, compared to the development of research data infrastructures, the development of infrastructures that enable physical samples to be discovered, described, and reused beyond disciplinary or institutional boundaries is only in its infancy (see e.g. Davies et al, 2021;Lannom et al, 2019).…”

Internet of Samples

“…These issues are long recognized by the data infrastructure community and multiple projects are actively working to make sample data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). These projects include the Internet of Samples (iSamples, Davies et al, 2021), Digital Specimens (DS, DiSSCoTech, 2020), BCoN's Extended Specimens (Lendemer et al, 2020), and US DOE's work (Damerow et al 2021). In this poster, we report the recent development of iSamples in the context of these other projects.…”