Building an Integrated Enhanced Virtual Research Environment Metadata Catalogue

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to boost multidisciplinary research by the building of an integrated catalogue or research assets metadata. Such an integrated catalogue should enable researchers to solve problems or analyse phenomena that require a view across several scientific domains. Design/methodology/approach There are two main approaches for integrating metadata catalogues provided by different e-science research infrastructures (e-RIs): centralised and distributed. The authors decided to implement a central metadata catalogue that describes, provides access to and records actions on the assets of a number of e-RIs participating in the system. The authors chose the CERIF data model for description of assets available via the integrated catalogue. Analysis of popular metadata formats used in e-RIs has been conducted, and mappings between popular formats and the CERIF data model have been defined using an XML-based tool for description and automatic execution of mappings. Findings An integrated catalogue of research assets metadata has been created. Metadata from e-RIs supporting Dublin Core, ISO 19139, DCAT-AP, EPOS-DCAT-AP, OIL-E and CKAN formats can be integrated into the catalogue. Metadata are stored in CERIF RDF in the integrated catalogue. A web portal for searching this catalogue has been implemented. Research limitations/implications Only five formats are supported at this moment. However, description of mappings between other source formats and the target CERIF format can be defined in the future using the 3M tool, an XML-based tool for describing X3ML mappings that can then be automatically executed on XML metadata records. The approach and best practices described in this paper can thus be applied in future mappings between other metadata formats. Practical implications The integrated catalogue is a part of the eVRE prototype, which is a result of the VRE4EIC H2020 project. Social implications The integrated catalogue should boost the performance of multi-disciplinary research; thus it has the potential to enhance the practice of data science and so contribute to an increasingly knowledge-based society. Originality/value A novel approach for creation of the integrated catalogue has been defined and implemented. The approach includes definition of mappings between various formats. Defined mappings are effective and shareable.Published929-9514IT. Banche datiJCR Journa

ARIADNE: A Research Infrastructure for Archaeology

Research e-infrastructures, digital archives, and data services have become important pillars of scientific enterprise that in recent decades have become ever more collaborative, distributed, and data intensive. The archaeological research community has been an early adopter of digital tools for data acquisition, organization, analysis, and presentation of research results of individual projects. However, the provision of e-infrastructure and services for data sharing, discovery, access, and (re)use have lagged behind. This situation is being addressed by ARIADNE, the Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Dataset Networking in Europe. This EU-funded network has developed an e-infrastructure that enables data providers to register and provide access to their resources (datasets, collections) through the ARIADNE data portal, facilitating discovery, access, and other services across the integrated resources. This article describes the current landscape of data repositories and services for archaeologists in Europe, and the issues that make interoperability between them difficult to realize. The results of the ARIADNE surveys on users’ expectations and requirements are also presented. The main section of the article describes the architecture of the e-infrastructure, core services (data registration, discovery, and access), and various other extant or experimental services. The ongoing evaluation of the data integration and services is also discussed. Finally, the article summarizes lessons learned and outlines the prospects for the wider engagement of the archaeological research community in the sharing of data through ARIADNE

Enabling European archaeological research: The ARIADNE E-infrastructure

Research e-infrastructures, digital archives and data services have become important pillars of scientific enterprise that in recent decades has become ever more collaborative, distributed and data-intensive. The archaeological research community has been an early adopter of digital tools for data acquisition, organisation, analysis and presentation of research results of individual projects. However, the provision of einfrastructure and services for data sharing, discovery, access and re-use has lagged behind. This situation is being addressed by ARIADNE: the Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Dataset Networking in Europe. This EUfunded network has developed an einfrastructure that enables data providers to register and provide access to their resources (datasets, collections) through the ARIADNE data portal, facilitating discovery, access and other services across the integrated resources. This article describes the current landscape of data repositories and services for archaeologists in Europe, and the issues that make interoperability between them difficult to realise. The results of the ARIADNE surveys on users' expectations and requirements are also presented. The main section of the article describes the architecture of the einfrastructure, core services (data registration, discovery and access) and various other extant or experimental services. The ongoing evaluation of the data integration and services is also discussed. Finally, the article summarises lessons learned, and outlines the prospects for the wider engagement of the archaeological research community in sharing data through ARIADNE

Enabling European Archaeological Research: The ARIADNE E-Infrastructure

In the last 20 years, e-infrastructures have become ever more important for the conduct and progress of research in all branches of scientific enterprise. Increasingly collaborative, distributed and data-intensive research requires the sharing of resources (data, tools, computing facilities) via e-infrastructure as well as support for effective co-operation among research groups (ESF 2011; ESFRI 2016). Moreover there is the expectation that with large datasets ('big data'), e-infrastructure and advanced computing techniques, new scientific questions can be tackled. The archaeological research community has been an early adopter of various digital methods and tools for data acquisition, organisation, analysis and presentation of research results of individual projects. The provision of e-infrastructure and services for data sharing, discovery, access and re-use for the heritage sector is, however, lagging behind other research fields, such as the natural and life sciences. The consequence is a high level of fragmentation of archaeological data and limited capability for collaborative research across institutional and national as well as disciplinary boundaries (Aspöck and Geser 2014). This situation is being addressed by ARIADNE: the Advanced Research Infrastructure for Archaeological Dataset Networking in Europe. This e-infrastructure initiative is being promoted by a consortium of archaeological institutes, data archives and technology developers, and funded under the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme (ARIADNE 2014a; Niccolucci and Richards 2013). ARIADNE enables archaeological data providers, large and small, to register and connect their resources (datasets, collections) to the e-infrastructure, and a data portal provides search, access and other services across the integrated resources. The portal puts into operation a proof of concept exemplar first developed under the ARENA (Archaeological Records of Europe Networked Access) project (Kenny and Richards 2005; Kilbride 2004), itself inspired by a proposal made by Hansen (1993). ARIADNE integrates resource discovery metadata using various controlled vocabularies, e.g. the W3C Data Catalogue Vocabulary (adapted for describing archaeological datasets), subject thesauri, gazetteers, chronologies, and the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM). Based on this integration the data portal offers several ways to search and access resources made available by data providers located in different countries. ARIADNE thus acts as a broker between data providers and users and offers additional web services for products such as high-resolution images, Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), 3D objects and landscapes. Employing such services in research projects or for content deposited in digital archives will greatly enhance the ability of researchers to publish, access and study archaeological content online. ARIADNE therefore represents a substantial advance for archaeology; in particular it provides a common platform where dispersed data resources can be uniformly described, discovered and accessed. It is also an essential step towards the even more ambitious goal of offering archaeologists integrated data, tools and computing resources for web-based research that creates new knowledge (e-archaeology). The next section describes the current landscape of data repositories and services for archaeologists in Europe, and the issues that make interoperability between them difficult to realise. The results of the ARIADNE user surveys undertaken to match expectations and requirements for the e-infrastructure and data portal services are then presented. The main part of the article describes ARIADNE's overall architecture, core services (data registration, discovery and access) and other extant or experimental services. A further section presents the on-going evaluation of the data integration and set of services. Finally, the article summarises some lessons already learned in the integration of data resources and services, and considers the prospects for the wider engagement of the archaeological research community in sharing data through the ARIADNE e-infrastructure and portal

ARDI: automatic generation of RDFS models from heterogeneous data sources

The current wealth of information, typically known as Big Data, generates a large amount of available data for organisations. Data Integration provides foundations to query disparate data sources as if they were integrated into a single source. However, current data integration tools are far from being useful for most organisations due to the heterogeneous nature of data sources, which represents a challenge for current frameworks. To enable data integration of highly heterogeneous and disparate data sources, this paper proposes a method to extract the schema from semi-structured (such as JSON and XML) and structured (such as relational) data sources, and generate an equivalent RDFS representation. The output of our method complements current frameworks and reduces the manual workload required to represent the input data sources in terms of the integration canonical data model. Our approach consists of production rules at the meta-model level that guarantee the correctness of the model translations. Finally, a tool for implementing our approach has been developed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Logros de la iniciativa ARIADNE para el intercambio de datos e investigación arqueológica

El objetivo general de la iniciativa ARIADNE es ayudar a las comunidades de investigación y gestión de datos arqueológicos en Europa y más allá, compartir y utilizar de manera más efectiva los datos dispersos en muchas instituciones y proyectos. La iniciativa desarrolló servicios de Infraestructura de Investigación que permiten la agregación, integración, búsqueda y visualización de registros de datos que describen y enlazan a colecciones de datos y elementos disponibles en los repositorios y bases de datos de los proveedores. Financiado bajo la rama de Infraestructuras de Investigación del Programa Marco de Investigación e Innovación de la Unión Europea, los proyectos ARIADNE implementaron y mejoraron la Infraestructura de Investigación ARIADNE y movilizaron una creciente comunidad de instituciones y proyectos colaborativos interesados en compartir datos a través de la e-Infraestructura. En el proyecto ARIADNEplus, se integraron casi 4 millones de registros de datos en el Portal ARIADNE. Después de una breve introducción a la iniciativa ARIADNE, este documento presenta algunos logros seleccionados de la iniciativa con el proyecto ARIADNEplus. Aborda la extensión y el apoyo de la comunidad ARIADNE, las actividades que promueven datos FAIR en arqueología y la estandarización de conjuntos de datos basados en el CIDOC CRM y los vocabularios de dominio Getty AAT y PeriodO. Considera el Portal ARIADNE como una herramienta efectiva de acceso a datos e investigación, y el desarrollo de Entornos Virtuales de Investigación como un nuevo enfoque innovador. Las observaciones finales destacan que la iniciativa ARIADNE proporciona incentivos para que las instituciones y proyectos compartan sus datos y los hagan útiles a través del Portal ARIADNE, lo que potencia el valor de los repositorios y bases de datos de los proveedores. Además, se señalan las formas en que ARIADNE ha fomentado una labor interdisciplinaria fecunda, por ejemplo, entre académicos y desarrolladores tecnológicos de servicios de investigación

Linked Conservation Data: Driving Change in Documentation Practice

Documentation is a core task for conservators, allowing evaluation of past choices and providing an evidence base for reasoned decision-making for future practice. However, much of the documentation created is not shared with other conservators or broader audiences. During the Linked Conservation Data (LCD) project, we explored the potential of documentation practices known as Linked Data for conservation, inspired by practices in other domains including medical science and biology, as well as various openGLAM initiatives. As part of the project, we developed: guidelines for harmonising disparate conservation terminologies; proposals for encoding different types of conservation data; a template for articulating policy in relation to conservation data; and a Linked Data pilot demonstrating the value of the approach. This work encourages institutions to begin sharing conservation records routinely, for use and re-use by other conservators. Adopting such a practice at large scale will provide an invaluable resource of conservation-related information that can be used for decision-making and enable data analysis and statistical work with large samples in conservation. We present conclusions and lessons learned from the LCD pilot, including the: importance of structured records; role of documentation of conservation vocabularies; foundational work still needed for sharing records as Linked Data; and practicalities of implementing a Linked Data system for sharing conservation records. We conclude by outlining the role and responsibilities that professional bodies need to adopt towards this effort

RDF graph summarization: principles, techniques and applications (tutorial)

International audienceThe explosion in the amount of the RDF on the Web has lead to the need to explore, query and understand such data sources. The task is challenging due to the complex and heterogeneous structure of RDF graphs which, unlike relational databases, do not come with a structure-dictating schema. Summarization has been applied to RDF data to facilitate these tasks. Its purpose is to extract concise and meaningful information from RDF knowledge bases, representing their content as faithfully as possible. There is no single concept of RDF summary, and not a single but many approaches to build such summaries; the summarization goal, and the main computational tools employed for summarizing graphs, are the main factors behind this diversity. This tutorial presents a structured analysis and comparison existing works in the area of RDF summarization; it is based upon a recent survey which we co-authored with colleagues [3]. We present the concepts at the core of each approach, outline their main technical aspects and implementation. We conclude by identifying the most pertinent summarization method for different usage scenarios, and discussing areas where future effort is needed

A metadata enriched system for the documentation of multi-modal digital imaging surveys

In the field of Digital Heritage Studies, data provenance has always been an open and challenging issue. As Cultural Heritage objects are unique by definition, the methods, the practices and the strategies to build digital documentation are not homogeneous, universal or standardized. Metadata is a minimalistic  yet powerful form to source and describe a digital document. They are often required or mandatory at an advanced stage of a Digital Heritage project. Our approach is to integrate since data capture steps meaningful information to document a Digital Heritage asset as it is moreover being composed nowadays from multiple sources or multimodal imaging surveys. This article exposes the methodological and technical aspects related to the ongoing development of MEMoS; standing for Metadata Enriched Multimodal documentation System. MEMoS aims to contribute to data provenance issues in current multimodal imaging surveys. It explores a way to document CH oriented capture data sets with a versatile descriptive metadata scheme inspired from the W7 ontological model. In addition, an experiment illustrated by several case studies, explores the possibility to integrate those metadata encoded into 2D barcodes directly to the captured image set. The article lays the foundation of a three parted methodology namely describe - encode and display toward metadata enriched documentation of CH objects