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The use of digital technologies within research has led to a proliferation of data, many new forms of research output and new modes of presentation and analysis. Many scientific communities are struggling with the challenge of how to manage the terabytes of data and new forms of output, they are producing. They are also under increasing pressure from funding organizations to publish their raw data, in addition to their traditional publications, in open archives. In this paper I describe an approach that involves the selective encapsulation of raw data, derived products, algorithms, software and textual publications within “scientific publication packages”. Such packages provide an ideal method for: encapsulating expert knowledge; for publishing and sharing scientific process and results; for teaching complex scientific concepts; and for the selective archival, curation and preservation of scientific data and output. They also provide a bridge between technological advances in the Digital Libraries and eScience domains. In particular, I describe the RDF-based architecture that we are adopting to enable scientists to construct, publish and manage “scientific publication packages” - compound digital objects that encapsulate and relate the raw data to its derived products, publications and the associated contextual, provenance and administrative metadata.

Abstract. This paper first proposes a high-level architecture for semi-automatically generating multimedia presentations by combining semantic inferencing with multimedia presentation generation tools. It then describes a system, based on this architecture, which was developed as a service to run over OAI archives -but is applicable to any repositories containing mixed-media resources described using Dublin Core. By applying an iterative sequence of searches across the Dublin Core metadata, published by the OAI data providers, semantic relationships can be inferred between the mixed-media objects which are retrieved. Using predefined mapping rules, these semantic relationships are then mapped to spatial and temporal relationships between the objects. The spatial and temporal relationships are expressed within SMIL files which can be replayed as multimedia presentations. Our underlying hypothesis is that by using automated computer processing of metadata to organize and combine semantically-related objects within multimedia presentations, the system may be able to generate new knowledge by exposing previously unrecognized connections. In addition, the use of multilayered information-rich multimedia to present the results, enables faster and easier information browsing, analysis, interpretation and deduction by the end-user.