The SERIES Virtual Database: Exchange Data Format and Local/Central Databases

At the beginning of the project, the access and exchange of data within the European scientific community was highly fragmented and the diffusion of information among laboratories was not sufficient. The outcome of an inquiry performed among partner laboratories at the beginning of SERIES showed that data storage in an unstructured way was the common approach in most of the cases. Naturally, access to and elaboration of the data was restricted only to the local users, a fact leading to a very low impact of the results on practice because of their limited dissemination and the difficulties in collaboration among researchers. SERIES (Networking Activity NA1) aimed, among others, at overcoming this state by establishing a culture of preservation of data in a structured way and by facilitating data exchange and collaboration with the broader research community. A structured database in which data are stored according to a commonly agreed Exchange Data Format has been implemented at the SERIES laboratory sites; tools for the management and automatic data import have been developed to facilitate data supply from participating laboratories. The data stored in the local databases are then made publically accessible to external users by means of a Data Access Portal, hosted in the University of Patras. The elements of the so-called SERIES virtual database are here described.

BOSI Anna;  KOTINAS Ilias;  LAMATA MARTINEZ Ignacio;  BOUSIAS Stathis;  CHAZELAS Jean Louis;  DIETZ Matt;  HASAN Rasedul;  MADABHUSHI Gopal;  PROTA Andrea;  BLAKEBOROUGH Tony;  PEGON Pierre; 

2015-10-26

Springer

JRC93277

978-3-319-10135-4 (print),    978-3-319-10136-1,   

1573-6059 (print),    1872-4671 (online),   

http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-10136-1_4,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC93277,   

10.1007/978-3-319-10136-1_4,