Data management matters

Abstract

There are a number of issues that inhibit the replication and reproduction of research, and make it hard to utilise existing scientific data to make new discoveries. These include poor...

Integrating autonomy into automated research platforms

“…To achieve active learning in these robotic experts, data capture and formatting for autonomous systems need richer and more structured information than existing paradigms like FAIR 43 alone can manage. 36,41 To ensure adequate logging for scientific rigor, standardized loggers will need to capture information on the sample, hardware, and platform levels. Fortunately, there exist bases for (meta)data capture and formatting in the ORD, 44 CRIPT, 45 HELAO, 41 ESCALATE, 34 and ESAMP 46 approaches which can augment FAIR logging.…”

“…12,13 Previous discussions concerning automation and autonomy have included: (a) a theoretical basis for comparing the degree of cognitive automation in chemical design 14 and in holistic experimental design and interpretation, 15 (b) prior demonstrations of automated research in the chemical, materials, and life sciences, [16][17][18][19][20] (c) the interplay between the components of automation and improved articial intelligence, 5,[21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31] (d) the practical considerations of developing automated platforms, 32,33 and (e) the associated data-management of automated workows. [34][35][36] In this perspective, we address the requirements and consequences of designing for autonomy in contrast to automation and discuss the challenges with its implementation and the community adoption of autonomy-enabling tools. In the discussion of design, control, and encoding of autonomy, we include our approach 2 as an example of designing autonomy-supporting tools for a self-driving experimental platform, comprising multiple autonomous agents.…”

Digital research environments: a requirements analysis

“…For many researchers there are regulations that require that the records and the data be stored for the long term so content may need to be exported so that it can be backed-up or preserved. Unfortunately, it is far too common for all of these data to be produced in a variety of non-standard formats 49 , which proves a major barrier to data sharing, both in terms of sharing between users and sharing between different software packages used to view data. There are ongoing efforts in the community to produce standard formats for the exchange of chemical information, such as AnIML 50 , and chemical identifiers such as InChI 51 .…”

“…Storage: Data storage options have been cited as another barrier both in the survey responses, and in previous research 49,59 . Many universities provide Office 365 accounts and storage options.…”

“…Data storage options have been cited as another barrier both in the survey responses, and in previous research. 49,59 Many universities provide Office 365 accounts and storage options. However, this clearly does not occur for all institutions as lack of cloud storage, limited data storage and poor cloud storage options have all been cited as limitations.…”