Data sharing and retrieval using OAI-PMH

Abstract

There is a growing consensus for the need to store and archive digital data, particularly for publicly funded research. Long-term preservation of that data generally requires some form of institutional archive, such as those directed to particular scientific communities of practice. Given that data is often of use to multiple communities of practice, which may have differing norms for data and metadata structure and semantics, effective standards for data and metadata exchange are important factors for users to be able to find and retrieve data. Toolsets that provide a coherent presentation of information across multiple standards are important for data search and access. One such toolset, Mercury, is a open-source metadata harvesting, data discovery, and access system, built for researchers to search for, share and obtain spatiotemporal data used across a range of climate and ecological sciences. Mercury is used across multiple projects to provide a coherent search interface for spatiotemporal data described in any of several metadata formats. Mercury has recently been extended to enable harvesting and distribution of metadata using the Open Archive Initiative Protocol for Metadata Handling (OAI-PMH). In this paper we describe Mercury's capabilities with multiple metadata formats, in general, and, more specifically, the results of our OAI-PMH implementations and the lessons learned.

A comparison of research data management platforms: architecture, flexible metadata and interoperability

“…In this matter, only CKAN is not natively compliant with OAI-PMH. This is a widely-used protocol that promotes interoperability between repositories while also streamlining data dissemination, and is a valuable resource for harvesters to index the contents of the repository [22,13]. As an initiative originally designed for government data, it is understandable that CKAN is missing this compliance, although it can leave institutions reluctant to its adoption as they can also have interest in getting their datasets cited by the community.…”

panMetaDocs, eSciDoc, and DOIDB—An Infrastructure for the Curation and Publication of File-Based Datasets for GFZ Data Services

“…The software components are coupled through web services. In addition, metadata can be harvested from each component into overarching metadata portals, e.g., B2FIND or Earth Cube, by using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) [16]. Figure 1 outlines the architecture of the publishing system at GFZ.…”

DOI for geoscience data - how early practices shape present perceptions

“…net/data-portal.html). Dissemination of metadata is commonly achieved through harvesting using the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting (OAI-PMH) (Devarakonda et al 2010;Van de Sompel et al 2004).…”