Figure 271007: DOE Data Explorer, DOE Data ID Service
As part of OSTI's mission to collect, preserve, and disseminate scientific and technical information (STI) resulting from research and development performed by DOE, including a rapidly increasing amount of data, OSTI recognizes the importance of being active in the data community. To meet the needs of researchers as new processes of digital acquisition have created a surge of data and created new challenges in data management and discoverability, OSTI hosts a database and offers a service to help make DOE scientific research data available for discovery and reuse. The DOE Data Explorer (DDE) is a search tool that enables users to locate DOE's collections of scientific research data and also retrieve individual datasets submitted by data centers, repositories, and other organizations within the Department. Through the DOE Data ID Service, OSTI assigns persistent identifiers, known as Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), to datasets submitted by DOE and its contractor and grantee researchers and registers the DOIs with DataCite to help increase access to digital data from DOE-funded scientific research.
OSTI recently attended a number of events at International Data Week (IDW), a conference held September 11-17, 2016, in Denver, CO. IDW brought together data professionals and researchers from all disciplines and from around the world to explore how best to exploit the data revolution to improve the scientific community's knowledge and benefit society through data-driven research and innovation. IDW was an ideal venue for OSTI to learn how others are thinking about data and to discuss plans to enhance the way researchers and data-minded individuals discover data produced by DOE.
OSTI representatives also made presentations during IDW. In addition to making accessible collections of DOE STI (including DDE), OSTI serves as the operating agent for Science.Gov, which provides access to science information (including data) from 15 Federal science agencies, and for WorldWideScience.org, which searches more than 100 scientific and technical databases from more than 70 nations around the world (including the content of Science.gov). On September 11, OSTI Director Brian Hitson spoke to the Members' Forum of the International Council for Science (ICSU) World Data System about the STI and research data available on WorldWideScience.org. The ICSU World Data System is an Associate Member of the WorldWideScience Alliance, which governs the international science gateway; WorldWideScience.org searches 15 resources focused on data (including the ICSU World Data System's collection) and is actively seeking new data resources. The inclusion of data collections in WorldWideScience.org, Hitson noted, further expands access to research and development results during the full research lifecycle and ultimately contributes to increased scientific collaboration and progress.
An integral part of International Data Week was a major conference focused on data science and data management. SciDataCon 2016, held September 11-13, was attended by over 600 scientists, researchers, industry leaders, policy makers, and data stewards. On September 12, OSTI's DDE Product Manager Sara Studwell presented at SciDataCon, during a session focused on data enrichment and packaging, about an exciting new project that re-envisions DDE and allows researchers to better understand the data at the point of search. Through a multi-phase restructuring, OSTI will create meaningful contextual relationships between data objects to make the data more accessible. Phase 1 is currently under way and is focused on improving the organization of the DDE database to ensure that these relationships are exposed to users; Phase 1 functionality will be available to users early in 2017. Long-term goals include working closely with researchers to explore how OSTI can present data in more meaningful and contextually relevant ways.
Attending IDW provided OSTI with a wealth of information about the current data landscape and insights into future developments that will help to guide decisions about OSTI's data discovery tools and services as the frontiers of data science expand. Please continue to monitor DDE over the coming months to see the improvements. And if you are interested in making your DOE-funded research data more discoverable by registering it for a DOI or want to learn more about the DOE Data Explorer or the DOE Data ID Service, please contact us at ddecomments@osti.gov.