Opening Up Climate Research: A Linked Data Approach to Publishing Data Provenance

Abstract

Traditionally, the formal scientific output in most fields of natural science has been limited to peer-reviewed academic journal publications, with less attention paid to the chain of intermediate data results and their associated metadata, including provenance. In effect, this has constrained the representation and verification of the data provenance to the confines of the related publications. Detailed knowledge of a dataset’s provenance is essential to establish the pedigree of the data for its effective re-use, and to avoid redundant re-enactment of the experiment or computation involved. It is increasingly important for open-access data to determine their authenticity and quality, especially considering the growing volumes of datasets appearing in the public domain. To address these issues, we present an approach that combines the Digital Object Identifier (DOI) – a widely adopted citation technique – with existing, widely adopted climate science data standards to formally publish detailed provenance of a climate research dataset as an associated scientific workflow. This is integrated with linked-data compliant data re-use standards (e.g. OAI-ORE) to enable a seamless link between a publication and the complete trail of lineage of the corresponding dataset, including the dataset itself.

Cloud computing in e-Science: research challenges and opportunities

“…Datasets have been and continue to be archived, but the scientific focus remains on the final output, with less attention paid to the underlying research model or workflow containing the chain of intermediate data results and their associated metadata, including provenance. This has effectively constrained the representation and verification of the data provenance to the confines of the related publications, as well as limiting the scope for cross-disciplinary integration of data and models to facilitate better science and analysis [69].…”

“…CLADDIER investigated differing methods for publishing datasets, and discussed the requirements for the peer-review of data, as well as proposing a structure for human readable citation strings. OJIMS took the case of an overlay journal for data publication and created a demonstrator journal, investigating the business case for operating it on a long-term basis, as well as surveying the proposed user community about their opinions on data publication and their use of data repositories [69].…”

Investigations as Research Objects Within Facilities Science

“…The notion of Research Objects has been explored in a number of projects in recent years (e.g. [11,12,13]), and Research Objects have been defined as:…”

Investigations as Research Objects Within Facilities Science

“…The notion of Research Objects has been explored in a number of projects in recent years (e.g. [11,12,13]), and Research Objects have been defined as:…”