An Exploration of the Life Cycle of eScience Collaboratory Data

Abstract

The success of eScience research depends not only upon effective collaboration between scientists and technologists but also upon the active involvement of information scientists. Archivists rarely receive scientific data until findings are published, by which time important information about their origins, context, and provenance may be lost. Research reported here addresses the lifecycles of data from ecological research with embedded networked sensing technologies. A better understanding of these processes will enable information scientists to participate in earlier stages of the life cycle and to improve curation of these types of scientific data. Evidence from our interview study and field research yields a nine lifecycle phases, and three types of lifecycle depending on the research goal. Findings include highlighting the impact of collaboration on the research processes and potential phases during which the integrity of the captured data is compromised.