Building an integrated enhanced virtual research environment metadata catalogue
| Published date | 09 December 2019 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EL-09-2018-0183 |
| Date | 09 December 2019 |
| Pages | 929-951 |
| Author | Laurent Remy,Dragan Ivanović,Maria Theodoridou,Athina Kritsotaki,Paul Martin,Daniele Bailo,Manuela Sbarra,Zhiming Zhao,Keith Jeffery |
| Subject Matter | Information & knowledge management,Information & communications technology,Internet |
Building an integrated enhanced
virtual research environment
metadata catalogue
Laurent Remy and Dragan Ivanovi
c
euroCRIS, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
Maria Theodoridou and Athina Kritsotaki
Forth, Heraklion, Greece
Paul Martin
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Daniele Bailo and Manuela Sbarra
Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Roma, Italy
Zhiming Zhao
University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and
Keith Jeffery
European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics,
Biot, France Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azu
Abstract
Purpose –The purpose of this paperis to boost multidisciplinary research by the building of an integrated
catalogue or research assets metadata. Such an integrated catalogue should enable researchers to solve
problemsor analyse phenomena that require a view acrossseveral scientific domains.
Design/methodology/approach –There are two main approaches for integratingmetadata catalogues
provided by different e-science research infrastructures (e-RIs): centralised and distributed. The authors
decided to implement a centralmetadata catalogue that describes, provides access to andrecords 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 usingan 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
supportingDublin Core, ISO 19139, DCAT-AP, EPOS-DCAT-AP,OIL-E and CKAN formats can be integrated
into the catalogue. Metadataare stored in CERIF RDF in the integrated catalogue. A web portal for searching
this cataloguehas 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-basedtool 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 futuremappings between other metadata formats.
This work has been carried out within the VRE4EIC project and has received funding from the
European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No. 676247.
Metadata
catalogue
929
Received26 September 2018
Revised22 January 2019
17June 2019
1August2019
Accepted21 August 2019
TheElectronic Library
Vol.37 No. 6, 2019
pp. 929-951
© Emerald Publishing Limited
0264-0473
DOI 10.1108/EL-09-2018-0183
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0264-0473.htm
Practical implications –The integrated catalogue is a partof the eVRE prototype, which is a result of
the VRE4EICH2020 project.
Social implications –The integrated catalogue should boost the performance of multi-disciplinary
research; thus it hasthe potential to enhance the practice of data scienceand so contribute to an increasingly
knowledge-basedsociety.
Originality/value –A novel approach for creation of the integrated catalogue has been defined and
implemented. The approachincludes definition of mappings between various formats.Defined mappings are
effectiveand shareable.
Keywords Online catalogs, CERIF, Virtual research environments, Vocabulary homogenization,
X3ML tools, Metadata catalog
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Nowadays, e-science research infrastructures (e-RIs) are community- or domain-specific, thus
not allowing researchers to solve problems or analyse phenomena that require a view across
several scientific domains. This limitation, together with the increasing need for multi-
disciplinary research, is addressed by virtual research environments (VREs). The Joint
Information Systems Committee (JISC) describes a VRE as comprising “a set of online tools and
other network resources and technologies interoperating with each other to facilitate or enhance
the processes of research practitioners within and across institutional boundaries”(www.jisc.
ac.uk/guides/implementing-a-virtual-research-environment-vre). VRE4EIC was a European
Horizon 2020 project charged with the development of a Europe-wide interoperable VRE to
empower research communities to perform multi-disciplinary research more easily and
effectively, and so, accelerate innovation and collaboration in the European research
community. This project aims to bridge across existing e-RIs, such as EPOS, ICOS and
SeaDataNet, by taking VREs one step further towards the enhanced-VRE (eVRE) model with a
standard reference architecture, generic reusable building blocks for VRE development and
explicit cross-e-RI interoperability support. A cross-e-RI metadata catalogue essentially enables
scientists to discover and utilise data and services from different communities and domains;
however, the development of such a catalogue requires a context-rich metadata schema that
can glue together different metadata schemas from different individual e-RI catalogues.
As mentioned, VRE4EIC has developed a reference architecture and software
components for VREs based on the conceptof the eVRE, a modular VRE based on standard
building blocks that can easily be adapted for use by different research communities.
Because the eVRE is intended to hide the IT complexity of the underlying implementation
layers from its users, this implies that one of the main concerns that an eVRE has to deal
with is heterogeneity in terms of protocols,data, metadata formats, techniques for accessing
data and so on. The reference architecture (Meghiniet al.,2016)defines six main conceptual
components that interoperate with well-defined interfaces. In this paper, the focus is on the
metadata manager, responsible for the building, maintaining and querying of the eVRE’s
internal metadatacatalogue.
The motivation for creation of the cross-e-RImetadata catalogue described in this paper
is to allow researchers to solve problems or analyse phenomena that require a view across
several scientific domains. The integratedcatalogue should boost the performance of multi-
disciplinary research, and thus enhance the practiceof data science and so contribute to an
increasingly knowledge-based society. The problem whichis addressed in this paper is how
such an integrated catalogue can be createdin the most efficient way possible. The research
questions addressedby this paper are the following:
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