Building Open Access to Research (OAR) Data Infrastructure at NIST.

Gretchen Greene,Robert Hanisch,Raymond Plante

doi:10.5334/dsj-2019-030

Abstract

As a National Metrology Institute (NMI), the USA National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) scientists, engineers and technology experts conduct research across a full spectrum of physical science domains. NIST is a non-regulatory agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce with a mission to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life. NIST research results in the production and distribution of standard reference materials, calibration services, and datasets. These are generated from a wide range of complex laboratory instrumentation, expert analyses, and calibration processes. In response to a government open data policy, and in collaboration with the broader research community, NIST has developed a federated Open Access to Research (OAR) scientific data infrastructure aligned with FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data principles. Through the OAR initiatives, NIST’s Material Measurement Laboratory Office of Data and Informatics (ODI) recently released a new scientific data discovery portal and public data repository. These science-oriented applications provide dissemination and public access for data from across the broad spectrum of NIST research disciplines, including chemistry, biology, materials science (such as crystallography, nanomaterials, etc.), physics, disaster resilience, cyberinfrastructure, communications, forensics, and others. NIST’s public data consist of carefully curated Standard Reference Data, legacy high valued data, and new research data publications. The repository is thus evolving both in content and features as the nature of research progresses. Implementation of the OAR infrastructure is key to NIST’s role in sharing high integrity reproducible research for measurement science in a rapidly changing world.

Highlights

National Institute of Standards and T echnology (NIST) research is predominantly characterized as “long tail” in terms of the data produced, i.e., small datasets that are highly varied in topic and content (Genova & Horstman 2016)
To achieve FAIR capabilities (Wilkinson et al 2016), the Open Access to Research (OAR) infrastructure supporting a science data portal and public data repository was designed to extend the limited Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to include standard open formats, protocols, and demonstrated best practices in data management and publication to harness the full potential for community re-use of NIST research data products
The implementation of the OAR scientific data infrastructure allows NIST scientists and professionals the means to share research data using standards and best practices adopted in the scientific community

Summary

Introduction

NIST research is predominantly characterized as “long tail” in terms of the data produced, i.e., small datasets that are highly varied in topic and content (Genova & Horstman 2016). This resulted in a baseline Minimum Viable Product (MVP), delivering a NIST public data listing (PDL) which enforces adherence to a new government data standard semantic model, the Project Open Data (POD) schema. To achieve FAIR capabilities (Wilkinson et al 2016), the OAR infrastructure supporting a science data portal and public data repository was designed to extend the limited MVP to include standard open formats, protocols, and demonstrated best practices in data management and publication to harness the full potential for community re-use of NIST research data products.

Results

Conclusion