Metadata database design as an aid to scientific discovery

Abstract

The National Science Foundation has a vision. They see the nation's cyber infrastructure enhancing science by making all data and research results easily available to all researchers, with cross-disciplinary exposure leading to new breakthroughs. One component of this vision is the creation of virtual communities of practice, which require both informational and human systems. Currently, data centers have informational systems, and scientific networking sites have human systems, but these systems are not collocated or integrated, and they are often focused on a single discipline. Online scientific networking significantly lags social and business networking because conducting science requires data and access to publications, components not available through current online networking tools. Thus, one way scientific discovery can be substantially enabled is by data centers adding the human system to their already existing information systems-by reorganizing their metadata to support professional networking modules, and installing such modules. In this work, I present the organizational structure and some of the requirements being considered at the International Arctic Research Center for our next few system upgrades, and how they will enable professional networking at the different levels. Considerable scientific benefits can result from adopting a user-friendly interface and organizing metadata to allow greater search flexibility. Such organization also supplies the metadata necessary for integration of a professional networking system.