ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems – Paper accepted
New paper “Conceptual service architecture to synchronise research data management services using machine-actionable data management plans” by Tomasz Miksa, senior researcher at SBA Research and senior scientist at TU Wien, was recently accepted for the ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems Journal.
This paper advances the work undertaken within the Research Data Alliance to the next level and serves as a crucial input for the design of the Interoperability Framework for DMPs that are relevant in the context of European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).
Title of the paper
Conceptual service architecture to synchronise research data management services using machine-actionable data management plans
Authors
Filip Zoubek, Tomasz Miksa, Andreas Rauber
Abstract
Researchers of all disciplines produce, share, and reuse data as part of everyday research. Most funders require them to manage and document their data using data management plans (DMPs). DMPs are often static documents that researchers create by answering questions in predefined templates at the beginning of the research and, therefore, may become outdated and obsolete as the project progresses. It is essential to keep the DMP up to date at all stages of the research lifecycle since numerous stakeholders and various services participate in data management that depend on information from them. In this paper, we propose a conceptual service architecture that uses machine-actionable data management plans to automate the exchange and synchronization of information between different semi-automated research data management (RDM) services acting on behalf of different stakeholders. To solve the stated problem, we analyze typical use cases in which the DMPs change and formulate requirements based on which we developed the conceptual architecture. We depict the designed architecture through a set of views, namely physical, development, logical, and process, using UML and BPMN representation that describe the processes required to synchronize DMP information among multiple services. We instantiate it by implementing a service that connects a data repository and a DMP tool. Thus, we evaluate to what extent the defined processes help in keeping DMP contents up to date and which criteria must be fulfilled to keep them highly automated. The result of the paper feeds into a larger discussion on streamlining interconnectivity and machine-actionability across planning, tracking, and assessing research phases. It also facilitates consensus building on enhancing the Research Data Alliance’s recommendation for machine-actionable DMPs.