Diversity and Interoperability of Repositories in a Grid Curation Environment

Repository-based environments are increasingly important in research. While grid technologies and its relatives used to draw most attention, the e-Infrastructure community is now often looking to the repository and preservation communities to learn from their experiences. After all, trustworthy data-management and concepts to foster the agenda for data-intensive research (Data-Intensive Research: how should we improve our ability to use data. e-Science Theme, March 2010. http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/1047/) are among the key requirements of researchers from a great variety of disciplines. The WissGrid project (WissGrid - Grid for the Sciences, a D-Grid project. Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). www.wissgrid.de) aims to provide cross-disciplinary data curation tools for a grid environment by adapting repository concepts and technologies to the existing D-Grid e-Infrastructure. To achieve this, it combines existing systems including Fedora, iRODS, DCache, JHove, and others. WissGrid respects diversity of systems, and aims to improve interoperability of the interfaces between those systems

Diversity and Interoperability of Repositories in a Grid Curation Environment

Repository-based environments are increasingly important in research. While grid technologies and its relatives used to draw most attention, the e-Infrastructure community is now often looking to the repository and preservation communities to learn from their experiences. After all, trustworthy data-management and concepts to foster the agenda for data-intensive research (Data-Intensive Research: how should we improve our ability to use data. e-Science Theme, March 2010. http://www.nesc.ac.uk/esi/events/1047/) are among the key requirements of researchers from a great variety of disciplines. The WissGrid project (WissGrid - Grid for the Sciences, a D-Grid project. Funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). www.wissgrid.de) aims to provide cross-disciplinary data curation tools for a grid environment by adapting repository concepts and technologies to the existing D-Grid e-Infrastructure. To achieve this, it combines existing systems including Fedora, iRODS, DCache, JHove, and others. WissGrid respects diversity of systems, and aims to improve interoperability of the interfaces between those systems

Digital Preservation Services : State of the Art Analysis

Research report funded by the DC-NET project.An overview of the state of the art in service provision for digital preservation and curation. Its focus is on the areas where bridging the gaps is needed between e-Infrastructures and efficient and forward-looking digital preservation services. Based on a desktop study and a rapid analysis of some 190 currently available tools and services for digital preservation, the deliverable provides a high-level view on the range of instruments currently on offer to support various functions within a preservation system.European Commission, FP7peer-reviewe

Digital Preservation, Archival Science and Methodological Foundations for Digital Libraries

Digital libraries, whether commercial, public or personal, lie at the heart of the information society. Yet, research into their long‐term viability and the meaningful accessibility of their contents remains in its infancy. In general, as we have pointed out elsewhere, ‘after more than twenty years of research in digital curation and preservation the actual theories, methods and technologies that can either foster or ensure digital longevity remain startlingly limited.’ Research led by DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE) and the Digital Preservation Cluster of DELOS has allowed us to refine the key research challenges – theoretical, methodological and technological – that need attention by researchers in digital libraries during the coming five to ten years, if we are to ensure that the materials held in our emerging digital libraries are to remain sustainable, authentic, accessible and understandable over time. Building on this work and taking the theoretical framework of archival science as bedrock, this paper investigates digital preservation and its foundational role if digital libraries are to have long‐term viability at the centre of the global information society.

TumorML: Concept and requirements of an in silico cancer modelling markup language

This paper describes the initial groundwork carried out as part of the European Commission funded Transatlantic Tumor Model Repositories project, to develop a new markup language for computational cancer modelling, TumorML. In this paper we describe the motivations for such a language, arguing that current state-of-the-art biomodelling languages are not suited to the cancer modelling domain. We go on to describe the work that needs to be done to develop TumorML, the conceptual design, and a description of what existing markup languages will be used to compose the language specification

Digital curation and the cloud

Digital curation involves a wide range of activities, many of which could benefit from cloud deployment to a greater or lesser extent. These range from infrequent, resource-intensive tasks which benefit from the ability to rapidly provision resources to day-to-day collaborative activities which can be facilitated by networked cloud services. Associated benefits are offset by risks such as loss of data or service level, legal and governance incompatibilities and transfer bottlenecks. There is considerable variability across both risks and benefits according to the service and deployment models being adopted and the context in which activities are performed. Some risks, such as legal liabilities, are mitigated by the use of alternative, e.g., private cloud models, but this is typically at the expense of benefits such as resource elasticity and economies of scale. Infrastructure as a Service model may provide a basis on which more specialised software services may be provided. There is considerable work to be done in helping institutions understand the cloud and its associated costs, risks and benefits, and how these compare to their current working methods, in order that the most beneficial uses of cloud technologies may be identified. Specific proposals, echoing recent work coordinated by EPSRC and JISC are the development of advisory, costing and brokering services to facilitate appropriate cloud deployments, the exploration of opportunities for certifying or accrediting cloud preservation providers, and the targeted publicity of outputs from pilot studies to the full range of stakeholders within the curation lifecycle, including data creators and owners, repositories, institutional IT support professionals and senior manager