1. eCrystals Federation: Open Repositories for global Open Science
Dr Liz Lyon, UKOLN, University of Bath, UK
Dr Simon Coles, University of Southampton, UK
DRIVER Summit, Gottingen, January 2008
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Federation

2. Open Science Millennials as native data scientists
Social networks for scientists
Second Life: virtual worlds
Community repositories for data
Tagging and sharing workflows
Open Notebook Science (ONS)

3. Big versus Small Science
“Data from experiments conducted as recently as six months ago might be suddenly deemed important, but those researchers may never find those numbers – or if they did might not know what those numbers meant”
“Lost in some research assistant’s computer, the data are often irretrievable or an undecipherable string of digits”
“To vet experiments, correct errors, or find new breakthroughs, scientists desperately need better ways to store and retrieve research data”
“Data from Big Science is … easier to handle, understand and archive. Small Science is horribly heterogeneous and far more vast. In time Small Science will generate 2-3 times more data than Big Science.”
‘Lost in a Sea of Science Data’ S.Carlson, The Chronicle of Higher Education (23/06/2006) 3

4. Blogs / social networks
wikis
Blogs / social networks
Repository networks
Harvest
Open “Publication”
Aggregators

5. eBank Project – building the eCrystals Data Repository
Started Sept 2003
3 Phases development
UKOLN-led interdisciplinary team
eBank Project – building the eCrystals Data Repository
ePrints Southampton
Institutional Repository exemplar
Embedded in workflow 5

6. Repository Foundations
Learned society + subject repository support
Using simple Dublin Core
Crystal structure
Title (Systematic IUPAC Name)
Authors
Affiliation
Creation Date
Additional chemical information through Qualified Dublin Core
Empirical formula
International Chemical Identifier (InChI)
Compound Class & Keywords
Specifies which ‘datasets’ are present in an entry
Application Profile
DOI links
Rights & Citation 6

7. Curate Preserve Standards
Funder
Data centres / aggregator services
Advisory
Scientist
CreateDeposit
Scientist
IR Federation
Curate Preserve Standards
Policy AdvocacyTraining
Harvest
Collaborate Share
Link
Discover Re-use
Link
eCrystals Federation Data Deposit Model (based on model in Dealing with Data Report UKOLN 2007)
Publishers
User
Link

8. Federation interoperability & linking services
Roll-out in 2 phases led by University of Southampton
Universities Sydney, Glasgow, Newcastle with eprints.org platform Version 3.0
Universities Cambridge, STFC, ReciprocalNet, ARCHER with other platforms
Establish Federation policies, application profile, mappings
Bi-directional links with derived articles in “publisher repositories”, IUCr, Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), Chemistry Central
StOReLink project proposal - Test linking options: StORe middleware and CLADDIER
OAI-ORE Testbed
Project PROSPECT – sharing &
integrating ontologies
eChemistry project

9. Laboratory practice & workflow
Community standard CIF
Mixed lab practice – central service facility versus single “staff crystallographer” in department
Achieve end-to-end workflow
Challenge of instrument manufacturers with proprietary formats
“Repository Lite” for smaller lab operations?
X-ray diffractometers 9

10. eBank-UK Phase 3 Curation & Preservation Study
Examined four main areas
Audit and certification (TRAC, DRAMBORA, NESTOR, ISO International repository audit and certification BOF Group)
The Open Archival Information System (OAIS) and Representation Information (RI)
eBank-UK application profile and preservation metadata
ePrints.org repository platform
Recommendations:
Self-assessment using DRAMBORA
Consider Representation Information in wider context
Develop preservation strategy
Capture preservation metadata - PREMIS

11. eCrystals Federation preservation & sustainability
Business models?
Alignment with experimental services
Hosting service
Validation service
Data repositories
Use DRAMBORA Interactive
Add PREMIS preservation metadata
Populate RRoRI with eCrystals representation information
Examine repository platform conformance to OAIS Ref Model
Survey partner preservation policies

12. Questions?
Slides will be available at :
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Federation 12