ROHub is a holistic solution for the storage, lifecycle management and preservation of scientific investigations, campaigns and operational processes via research objects. It makes these resources available to others, allows to publish and release them through a DOI, and allows to discover and reuse pre-existing scientific knowledge. Built entirely around the research object concept and inspired by sustainable software management principles, ROHub is the reference platform implementing natively the full research object model and paradigm, which provides the backbone to a wealth of RO-centric applications and interfaces across different scientific communities.
SERVICE DESCRIPTION
ROHub is nowadays the reference platform for research object: management, supporting the preservation and lifecycle management of scientific investigations, research campaigns and operational processes.
As the only existing platform implementing natively the full research object model and paradigm, resources associated to a particular experiment are aggregated in a single digital entity (research object), and metadata relevant to understand and interpret the content is represented as semantic annotations that are user and machine readable.
Some of the key high-level features supporting the research lifecycle include:
- to create high-quality research objects that can be interpreted and potentially reproduced
- to manage and keep track of their evolution
- to collaborate along this process
- to share, publish and cite these objects
- to search and discover them or its aggregated resources
- to assess and monitor the progress of the associated investigation/challenge with respect to a set of predefined requirements
- to preserve them, ensuring that they will remain accessible and reproducible.
- release and publication of research objects, including the assignment of DOIs to investigation snapshots/releases.
Some of these lifecycle management functionalities in ROHub are inspired from software management best practices required to support complex research work involving distributed resources and investigators, and include the mechanisms to define access control policies in ROHub to customize the access and collaboration possibilities in the research object.
ROHub comprises a backend service, exposing a set of Restful APIs, a reference Web application, and integrates multiple added-value research object services. The full specification of all the APIs is publicly available at Github . The backend can support multiple client applications; some existing applications using ROHub include RO Manager command line tool, collaboration shperes, virtual research community portals from the EVEREST Earth Science VRE, and UNAVCO/NEON time series Web application. Internally, ROHub backend has a modular structure that comprises access components, long-term preservation components and the controller that manages the flow of data, as described in detail in [2], [3].
SPECIAL ACCESS CONDITIONS
No
PREREQUISITES
Identity provider (open-id), such as google, orcid, or project specific.
CASE EXAMPLES
ROHub can support different stakeholders, with the primary focus on scientists, researchers, students and enthusiasts, enabling them to manage and preserve their research work, to share it and make it available for publishing, to collaborate and to discover new knowledge. However, other user groups can be benefited by ROHub like the Industry that can leverage the platform to externalize their research to a community of researches worldwide in multiple scientific domains, e.g., launching campaings for research on specific topics, and the follow and monitor the progress. Similarly, investors can keep up to date and track scientific advances to fund and get involved in future breakthroughs. As another example, publishers can also leverage ROHub to advertise their journals with researchers, have access to a pool of potential reviewers, and implement more interactive, review processes.
Example case: Support the research lifecycle of GEO-Geohazard Supersites and Natural Laboratories (GSNL) initiative through HPC and research objects - In addition to computing power and resources, researchers from the geo-gnsl community need to manage their data, methods and other resources, enhance the visibility of scientific breakthroughs, encourage reuse, and foster a broader accessibility. Furthermore, they are interested in tools and mechanisms supporting the full research lifecycle of their investigations, and for managing the results obtained and conclusions derived, up to capabilities enabling the collaboration and sharing of the investigation materials, to name a few.
SUCCESS STORY
SERVICE CAN BE COMBINED WITH
Identity services (e.g., EGI check-in), text mining services (e.g., Cogito), data access services (e.g., data cubes), storage services (e.g., EUDAT), interactive coding (e.g., Jupyter notebooks), pusblishing services (e.g., Zenodo/OpenAIre).
