A manageable model for experimental research data: An empirical study in the materials sciences

Abstract

As in many other research areas the material sciences produce vast amounts of experimental data. The corresponding findings are then published, albeit the data remains in heterogeneous formats within institutes and is neither shared nor reused by the scientific community. To address this issue we have developed and deployed a scientific data management environment for the material sciences at various test facilities. Unlike other systems this one explicitly models every facet of the experiment and the materials used therein - thereby supporting the initial design of the experiment, its execution and the ensuing results. Consequently, the collection of the structured data becomes an integral part of the research workflow rather than a post hoc nuisance. In this paper we report on an empirical study that was performed to test the effects of a paradigm change in the data model to align it better with the actual scientific practice at hand.