Digital Data Repositories in Chemistry and Their Integration with Journals and Electronic Notebooks by Matthew J. Harvey, Nicholas J. Mason, Henry S. Rzepa.
Abtract:
We discuss the concept of recasting the data-rich scientific journal article into two components, a narrative and separate data components, each of which is assigned a persistent digital object identifier. Doing so allows each of these components to exist in an environment optimized for purpose. We make use of a poorly-known feature of the handle system for assigning persistent identifiers that allows an individual data file from a larger file set to be retrieved according to its file name or its MIME type. The data objects allow facile visualization and retrieval for reuse of the data and facilitates other operations such as data mining. Examples from five recently published articles illustrate these concepts.
A very promising effort to integrate published content and electronic notebooks in chemistry. Encouraging that in addition to the technical and identity issues the authors also point out the lack of incentives for the extra work required to achieve useful integration.
Everyone agrees that deeper integration of resources in the sciences will be a game-changer but renewing the realization that there is no such thing as a free lunch, is an important step towards that goal.
This article easily repays a close read with interesting subject identity issues and the potential that topic maps would offer to such an effort.