Requirements on Long-Term Accessibility and Preservation of Research Results with Particular Regard to Their Provenance

Claudia Piesche,Andreas Weber

doi:10.3390/ijgi5040049

Claudia Piesche, Andreas Weber

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi5040049

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Abstract

Since important national and international funders of research projects require statements on the long-term accessibility of research results, many new solutions appeared to fulfil these demands. The solutions are implemented on various scopes, starting from specific solutions for one research group up to solutions with a national focus (i.e., the RADAR project). While portals for globally standardized research data (e.g., climate data) are available, there is currently no provision for the large amount of data resulting from specialized research in individual research foci, the so called long-tail of sciences. In this article we describe the considerations regarding the implementation of a local research data repository for the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 840. The main focus will be on the examination of requirements for, and an agenda of, a possible technical implementation. Requirements were derived from a more theoretical examination of similar projects and relevant literature, diverse discussions with researchers and project leaders, by analysis of existing publication data, and finally the prototypical implementation with refining iterations. Notably, the discussions with the researchers lead to new features going beyond the challenges of the mere long-term preservation of research data. Besides the need for an infrastructure that permits long-term preservation and retrieval of research data, our system will allow the reconstruction of the complete provenance of published research results. This requirement is a serious diversification of the problem, because it creates the need to qualify additional transformation data, describing the transformation process from primary research data to research results.

Highlights

Introduction and MotivationThe importance of long-term accessibility and public access to research data grew significantly with the publication of the “OECD Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding” in 2007 [1]
The improvement of the long-term accessibility and the collaboration with other research groups is highly welcome, in general. Their stance on access to research data, is that it should be strictly limited to specific persons during the research process; even after the publication of the results, open access to primary research data is not wanted, because it is believed that the reuse of the data should be limited to the original research group, at least for some time
In the special case of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 840, the coordinators of the sub-projects joined in as additional important stakeholders

Summary

Introduction and Motivation

The importance of long-term accessibility and public access to research data grew significantly with the publication of the “OECD Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding” in 2007 [1]. Existing solutions for the long-term storage of data of that kind are specialized and usually not designed for public use, much less for reuse. The improvement of the long-term accessibility and the collaboration with other research groups is highly welcome, in general Their stance on access to research data, is that it should be strictly limited to specific persons during the research process; even after the publication of the results, open access to primary research data is not wanted, because it is believed that the reuse of the data should be limited to the original research group, at least for some time. In the special case of the Collaborative Research Centre (CRC) 840, the coordinators of the sub-projects joined in as additional important stakeholders They have demanded an easy way to understand the provenance of research results. The main focus of this manuscript is the description of the requirements origination process for a research data repository for the CRC 840, the requirements itself, and the concept of implementation resulting therefrom

Requirements Resulting from a Theoretical Background

Long-Term Preservation and Data Management in General

Comprehensive Projects

Structural Information—Project “Prospect”

Lessons Learned and Resulting Requirements

Description of the CRC 840 and the INF Z2 Sub-Project

Diversity

Reproducibility

Synergistic Effects

Outlook

OECD: OECD