ERMrest: a web service for collaborative data management

Abstract

The foundation of data oriented scientific collaboration is the ability for participants to find, access and reuse data created during the course of an investigation, what has been referred to as the FAIR principles. In this paper, we describe ERMrest, a collaborative data management service that promotes data oriented collaboration by enabling FAIR data management throughout the data life cycle. ERMrest is a RESTful web service that promotes discovery and reuse by organizing diverse data assets into a dynamic entity relationship model. We present details on the design and implementation of ERMrest, data on its performance and its use by a range of collaborations to accelerate and enhance their scientific output.