ScienceDB: A Public Multidisciplinary Research Data Repository for eScience

Abstract

Research data repositories are necessary infrastructures that ensure the data generated for research are accessible, stable, reliable, and reusable. Based on years of accumulated data work experience, the Computer Network Information Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has built a multi-disciplinary data repository ScienceDB for research users and teams using its big data storage, analysis and computing environments. This paper firstly introduces the motivation to develop ScienceDB and gives a profile to it. Then the overall technical framework of ScienceDB is introduced, and the key technologies such as the support for multidiscipline extensibility, data collaboration and data recommendation are analyzed deeply. And then this paper presents the functions and features of ScienceDB's current version and discusses some issues such as its data policy, data quality assurance measures, and current application status. Finally, it summarizes and puts forward that it needs to carry out more in-depth research and practice of ScienceDB in order to meet the higher requirements of eScience in terms of thorough data association and fusion, data analysis and mining, data evaluation, and so on.