Development of an Automated Tool for Locating, Harvesting and Storing Experimental Scientific and Technical Data

Many Scientific and technical data sets have been placed in a distributed set of data repositories, and more are added continuously. Internet search engines can provide some answers to user queries, but the quality and completeness of the results are uneven and unreliable. This project will demonstrate how an integrated tool can locate, harvest, and deposit data into a user-specified repository. The Phase I project developed a prototype to record essential facts about scientific and technical data collections. This prototype was designed to assist users in quickly locating data collections of interest. The project created a generic ontology for describing data, used that ontology to enhance a prototype web-based program to accept factual information about data sets from different disciplines, and dry tested the ontology and the data input tool using information about a variety of data collections generated and maintained by Department of Energy Data Centers. The Office of Scientific and Technical Information created and hosts interfaces that search data repositories from federal agencies and worldwide organizations accountable for the quality and accuracy of their information. This project will provide a state of the art tool for a more automated, streamlined process to create and maintain data repositories. A federated search interface can be provided to the scientific community and to the general public that retrieves up to date, relevant, valid information for a broad range of applications, e.g., technical analyses, policy, and education. Commercial Applications and other Benefits as described by the awardee: This technology can enable government and commercial organizations that manage scientific data to provide various approaches to use and re-use data sets and related information.