RO model for Scientists

ROs for Astronomers

Description

A Multi-workflow-centric Research Object provides information of all the components involved in a digital (not necessarily computational) astronomical experiment. This information allows:

controlled access to the individual physical digital components: workflows, data, processes (scripts, software, web services), documents
graphical representation of the causal inter-connections and dependencies in the digital components of the RO exposing modularity, adaptability, potential re-use, strengths and weaknesses
graphical representation of the dependencies in the steps of each workflow exposing their modularity, adaptability and potential re-use, as well as a detailed and complete provenance of their results
accounting for the history and evolution of the RO: modifications done, who, when and why, with a graphical representation of the evolution of its stability
understand and reproduce the whole experiment with no significant effort and computational resources
annotations in each of the components and in the whole RO with information not covered in the model; how to use and repair, caveats, quality, trust assessment,..
description, purpose, authoring, acknowledgements, references, citations, social rating and comments,..

Research Objects can be seen as:

new kind of live-tutorials exposing in a seamless way how to take advantage of the rich infrastructure of data existing in Astronomy not efficiently used
highly valuable methodology for training young researchers, monitoring and supervising their research by seniors
a normalized way of publishing digital experiments following a set of bet practices that improves discovery, reproducibility and re-use