2,592 research outputs found
Towards structured sharing of raw and derived neuroimaging data across existing resources
Data sharing efforts increasingly contribute to the acceleration of
scientific discovery. Neuroimaging data is accumulating in distributed
domain-specific databases and there is currently no integrated access mechanism
nor an accepted format for the critically important meta-data that is necessary
for making use of the combined, available neuroimaging data. In this
manuscript, we present work from the Derived Data Working Group, an open-access
group sponsored by the Biomedical Informatics Research Network (BIRN) and the
International Neuroimaging Coordinating Facility (INCF) focused on practical
tools for distributed access to neuroimaging data. The working group develops
models and tools facilitating the structured interchange of neuroimaging
meta-data and is making progress towards a unified set of tools for such data
and meta-data exchange. We report on the key components required for integrated
access to raw and derived neuroimaging data as well as associated meta-data and
provenance across neuroimaging resources. The components include (1) a
structured terminology that provides semantic context to data, (2) a formal
data model for neuroimaging with robust tracking of data provenance, (3) a web
service-based application programming interface (API) that provides a
consistent mechanism to access and query the data model, and (4) a provenance
library that can be used for the extraction of provenance data by image
analysts and imaging software developers. We believe that the framework and set
of tools outlined in this manuscript have great potential for solving many of
the issues the neuroimaging community faces when sharing raw and derived
neuroimaging data across the various existing database systems for the purpose
of accelerating scientific discovery
Recommended from our members
FAIR principles and the IEDB: short-term improvements and a long-term vision of OBO-foundry mediated machine-actionable interoperability.
The Immune Epitope Database (IEDB), at www.iedb.org, has the mission to make published experimental data relating to the recognition of immune epitopes easily available to the scientific public. By presenting curated data in a searchable database, we have liberated it from the tables and figures of journal articles, making it more accessible and usable by immunologists. Recently, the principles of Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability have been formulated as goals that data repositories should meet to enhance the usefulness of their data holdings. We here examine how the IEDB complies with these principles and identify broad areas of success, but also areas for improvement. We describe short-term improvements to the IEDB that are being implemented now, as well as a long-term vision of true 'machine-actionable interoperability', which we believe will require community agreement on standardization of knowledge representation that can be built on top of the shared use of ontologies
The Research Object Suite of Ontologies: Sharing and Exchanging Research Data and Methods on the Open Web
Research in life sciences is increasingly being conducted in a digital and
online environment. In particular, life scientists have been pioneers in
embracing new computational tools to conduct their investigations. To support
the sharing of digital objects produced during such research investigations, we
have witnessed in the last few years the emergence of specialized repositories,
e.g., DataVerse and FigShare. Such repositories provide users with the means to
share and publish datasets that were used or generated in research
investigations. While these repositories have proven their usefulness,
interpreting and reusing evidence for most research results is a challenging
task. Additional contextual descriptions are needed to understand how those
results were generated and/or the circumstances under which they were
concluded. Because of this, scientists are calling for models that go beyond
the publication of datasets to systematically capture the life cycle of
scientific investigations and provide a single entry point to access the
information about the hypothesis investigated, the datasets used, the
experiments carried out, the results of the experiments, the people involved in
the research, etc. In this paper we present the Research Object (RO) suite of
ontologies, which provide a structured container to encapsulate research data
and methods along with essential metadata descriptions. Research Objects are
portable units that enable the sharing, preservation, interpretation and reuse
of research investigation results. The ontologies we present have been designed
in the light of requirements that we gathered from life scientists. They have
been built upon existing popular vocabularies to facilitate interoperability.
Furthermore, we have developed tools to support the creation and sharing of
Research Objects, thereby promoting and facilitating their adoption.Comment: 20 page
Joining up health and bioinformatics: e-science meets e-health
CLEF (Co-operative Clinical e-Science Framework) is an MRC sponsored project in the e-Science programme that aims to establish methodologies and a technical infrastructure forthe next generation of integrated clinical and bioscience research. It is developing methodsfor managing and using pseudonymised repositories of the long-term patient histories whichcan be linked to genetic, genomic information or used to support patient care. CLEF concentrateson removing key barriers to managing such repositories ? ethical issues, informationcapture, integration of disparate sources into coherent ?chronicles? of events, userorientedmechanisms for querying and displaying the information, and compiling the requiredknowledge resources. This paper describes the overall information flow and technicalapproach designed to meet these aims within a Grid framework
Searching Data: A Review of Observational Data Retrieval Practices in Selected Disciplines
A cross-disciplinary examination of the user behaviours involved in seeking
and evaluating data is surprisingly absent from the research data discussion.
This review explores the data retrieval literature to identify commonalities in
how users search for and evaluate observational research data. Two analytical
frameworks rooted in information retrieval and science technology studies are
used to identify key similarities in practices as a first step toward
developing a model describing data retrieval
FAIRness and Usability for Open-access Omics Data Systems
Omics data sharing is crucial to the biological research community, and the last decade or two has seen a huge rise in collaborative analysis systems, databases, and knowledge bases for omics and other systems biology data. We assessed the FAIRness of NASAs GeneLab Data Systems (GLDS) along with four similar kinds of systems in the research omics data domain, using 14 FAIRness metrics. The range of overall FAIRness scores was 6-12 (out of 14), average 10.1, and standard deviation 2.4. The range of Pass ratings for the metrics was 29-79%, Partial Pass 0-21%, and Fail 7-50%. The systems we evaluated performed the best in the areas of data findability and accessibility, and worst in the area of data interoperability. Reusability of metadata, in particular, was frequently not well supported. We relate our experiences implementing semantic integration of omics data from some of the assessed systems for federated querying and retrieval functions, given their shortcomings in data interoperability. Finally, we propose two new principles that Big Data system developers, in particular, should consider for maximizing data accessibility
Interoperability and FAIRness through a novel combination of Web technologies
Data in the life sciences are extremely diverse and are stored in a broad spectrum of repositories ranging from those designed for particular data types (such as KEGG for pathway data or UniProt for protein data) to those that are general-purpose (such as FigShare, Zenodo, Dataverse or EUDAT). These data have widely different levels of sensitivity and security considerations. For example, clinical observations about genetic mutations in patients are highly sensitive, while observations of species diversity are generally not. The lack of uniformity in data models from one repository to another, and in the richness and availability of metadata descriptions, makes integration and analysis of these data a manual, time-consuming task with no scalability. Here we explore a set of resource-oriented Web design patterns for data discovery, accessibility, transformation, and integration that can be implemented by any general- or special-purpose repository as a means to assist users in finding and reusing their data holdings. We show that by using off-the-shelf technologies, interoperability can be achieved atthe level of an individual spreadsheet cell. We note that the behaviours of this architecture compare favourably to the desiderata defined by the FAIR Data Principles, and can therefore represent an exemplar implementation of those principles. The proposed interoperability design patterns may be used to improve discovery and integration of both new and legacy data, maximizing the utility of all scholarly outputs
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