Scratchpads: a data-publishing framework to build, share and manage information on the diversity of life.
Scratchpads: a data-publishing framework to build, share and manage information on the diversity of life.
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DOI：
10.1186/1471-2105-10-s14-s6
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发表时间：
2009-11-10
影响因子：
3
通讯作者：
Roberts D
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Smith VS;Rycroft SD;Harman KT;Scott B;Roberts D
自然史科学的特点是一个单一的巨大目标(记录、描述和综合与生命多样性有关的所有方面)，只有通过看似无限的一系列较小的研究才能解决这个问题。该学科未能将这些小研究与自然历史的目标有意义地联系起来，这使得很难向更广泛的科学界证明自然历史的价值。数字技术提供了弥合这一差距的手段。我们描述了ScratchPads的系统架构和模板设计，这是一个数据发布框架，让一群人创建自己的社交网络，支持自然历史科学。ScratchPad通过一个共同的数据库和系统架构满足各个研究社区的特殊需要。它具有足够的灵活性和可扩展性，可以支持多个网络，每个网络都有自己选择的功能、视觉设计和组成数据。我们的数据模型支持标准化数据元素上的Web服务，这些数据元素可能会被GBIF和生命百科全书等相关计划使用。ScratchPad允许用户围绕用户定义或导入的本体组织数据，包括生物分类。自动语义注释和索引应用于所有内容，使用户能够直观地导航和管理各种生物数据，包括从第三方资源中提取的内容。归档可引用页面的系统允许使用唯一标识符进行稳定的引用，并通过正常的引用过程向贡献者提供信用。我们的框架目前服务于100个网站上的1100多名注册用户，涵盖学术、业余和公民科学受众。这些用户在使用的头两年产生了超过13万个节点的内容。我们的架构模板可以作为其他研究社区在生物多样性研究之外开发数据发布框架的典范。
Natural History science is characterised by a single immense goal (to document, describe and synthesise all facets pertaining to the diversity of life) that can only be addressed through a seemingly infinite series of smaller studies. The discipline's failure to meaningfully connect these small studies with natural history's goal has made it hard to demonstrate the value of natural history to a wider scientific community. Digital technologies provide the means to bridge this gap. We describe the system architecture and template design of "Scratchpads", a data-publishing framework for groups of people to create their own social networks supporting natural history science. Scratchpads cater to the particular needs of individual research communities through a common database and system architecture. This is flexible and scalable enough to support multiple networks, each with its own choice of features, visual design, and constituent data. Our data model supports web services on standardised data elements that might be used by related initiatives such as GBIF and the Encyclopedia of Life. A Scratchpad allows users to organise data around user-defined or imported ontologies, including biological classifications. Automated semantic annotation and indexing is applied to all content, allowing users to navigate intuitively and curate diverse biological data, including content drawn from third party resources. A system of archiving citable pages allows stable referencing with unique identifiers and provides credit to contributors through normal citation processes. Our framework currently serves more than 1,100 registered users across 100 sites, spanning academic, amateur and citizen-science audiences. These users have generated more than 130,000 nodes of content in the first two years of use. The template of our architecture may serve as a model to other research communities developing data publishing frameworks outside biodiversity research.