eSciDoc Infrastructure: A Fedora-Based e-Research Framework

a b s t r a c tOn timescales beyond the life of a research project, a core task in the curation of digital research data is the migration of data and metadata to new storage media, new hardware, and software systems. These migrations are necessitated by ageing software systems, ageing hardware systems, and the rise of new technologies in data management. Using the example of the German Continental Deep Drilling Program (KTB) we outline steps taken to keep the acquired data accessible to researchers and trace the history of data management in KTB from a project platform in the early 1990ies through three migrations up to the current data management platform. The migration steps taken not only preserved the data, but also made data from KTB accessible via internet and citable through Digital Object Identifier (DOI). We also describe measures taken to manage hardware and software obsolescence and minimise the amount of maintenance necessary to keep data accessible beyond the active project phase. At present, data from KTB are stored in an Open Archival Information System (OAIS) compliant repository based on the eSciDoc repository framework. Information packages consist of self-contained packages of binary data files and discovery metadata in Extensible Mark-up Language (XML) format. The binary data files were created from a relational database used for data management in the previous version of the system, and from websites generated from a content management system. Metadata are provided in DataCite, GCMD-DIF, and ISO19139/INSPIRE schema definitions. Access to the KTB data is provided through download pages which are produced by XML transformation from the stored metadata.

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“…Our choice fell on the software eSciDoc, a joint project by the Max Planck Digital Library and FIZ Karlsruhe [19].…”

Section: Designing a Persistent Systemmentioning

confidence: 99%

Curating the web’s deep past – Migration strategies for the German Continental Deep Drilling Program web content

Klump

Ulbricht

Conze

2015

GeoResJ

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“…Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the development of eSciDoc was inspired by the requirement to build a framework for virtual research environments for multi-disciplinary research organisations. eSciDoc is a middleware for internet based research applications [21]. It implements functions commonly used for assembling and publishing binary files, such as creating, reading, updating and deleting.…”

Section: Software Components For Data Publicationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Ulbricht

Elger

Bertelmann

et al. 2016

IJGI

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Abstract:The GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences is the national laboratory for Geosciences in Germany. As part of the Helmholtz Association, providing and maintaining large-scale scientific infrastructures are an essential part of GFZ activities. This includes the generation of significant volumes and numbers of research data, which subsequently become source materials for data publications. The development and maintenance of data systems is a key component of GFZ Data Services to support state-of-the-art research. A challenge lies not only in the diversity of scientific subjects and communities, but also in different types and manifestations of how data are managed by research groups and individual scientists. The data repository of GFZ Data Services provides a flexible IT infrastructure for data storage and publication, including minting of digital object identifiers (DOI). It was built as a modular system of several independent software components linked together through Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) provided by the eSciDoc framework. Principal application software are panMetaDocs for data management and DOIDB for logging and moderating data publications activities. Wherever possible, existing software solutions were integrated or adapted. A summary of our experiences made in operating this service is given. Data are described through comprehensive landing pages and supplementary documents, like journal articles or data reports, thus augmenting the scientific usability of the service.

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“…The eSciDoc system (Razum, Schwichtenberg, Wagner, & Hoppe, 2009) covers versioning, provenance, and composition in combination with PIDs. CLARIN Virtual Collections (http://www.clarin.eu/sites/default/files/virtual_collections-CLARIN-ShortGuide.pdf) serve a purpose overlapping with the composite objects use case.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Actionable Persistent Identifier Collections

2014

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Persistent Identifiers (PIDs) have lately received a lot of attention from scientific infrastructure projects and communities that aim to employ them for management of massive amounts of research data and metadata objects. Such usage scenarios, however, require additional facilities to enable automated data management with PIDs. In this article, we present a conceptual framework that is based on the idea of using common abstract data types (ADTs) in combination with PIDs. This provides a well-defined interface layer that abstracts from both underlying PID systems and higher-level applications. Our practical implementation is based on the Handle System, yet the fundamental concept of PID-based ADTs is transferable to other infrastructures, and it is well suited to achieve interoperability between them.

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eSciDoc Infrastructure: A Fedora-Based e-Research Framework

Cited by 17 publications

References 6 publications

Curating the web’s deep past – Migration strategies for the German Continental Deep Drilling Program web content

Curating the web’s deep past – Migration strategies for the German Continental Deep Drilling Program web content

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

Actionable Persistent Identifier Collections

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