News

Provisioner leads advances in research data management

 

13/04/2018

University of Technology Sydney (UTS) in conjunction with QCIF are developing “Provisioner”, an open framework to integrate and simplify research data management.

Provisioner will be accessible via the ReDBox 2.0 data management platform, enabling an end-to-end data management solution that readily integrates with existing research tools to reduce software customisation and minimise manual data entry. ReDBox 2.0 is on track to be available in August this year.
 
The ReDBox-Provisioner service will be an extended function of the ReDBox research data management planning tool. It will enable researchers to carry out high-level research data management tasks.
 
Provisioner allows researchers to create a workspace that is attached to a service selected from a service catalogue. In the initial release, these services will include GitLab code repositories, OMERO microscopy data storage and LabArchive electronic lab notebooks. In ReDBox, the researcher can then manage that workspace with a variety of functions, including:

• sharing a workspace (a directory, site or project belonging to a researcher in a particular tool) with other researchers
• setting a workspace to be immutable (read-only)
• making a workspace from one tool available in a different research tool.

Future Provisioner development is expected to support many more useful processes, including data archiving and data publication.
 
Mike Lynch, solution designer and analyst at eResearch Support at UTS, has written more about Provisioner and ReDBox in his UTS eResearch blog post, published Thursday, 5 April 2018.
 
QCIF and UTS are also working with the ANDS, Nectar and RDS partnership to develop the framework.

Image from the UTS eResearch blog post.