Towards A Web-Enabled Geo-Sample Web: An Open Source Resource Registration and Management System for Connecting Geo-Samples to the Web

Within the earth sciences the curation and sharing of geo-samples is crucial to supporting reproducible research, in addition to extending the use of the samples in new research, and saving costs by avoiding sample loss and duplicating sampling activities. In the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), researchers gather various geo-samples as part of their field studies and collaborative projects. The diversity of the samples and their unsystematic management led ambiguous sample numbers, incomplete sample descriptions, and difficulties in finding the samples and their related data. These problems are also found in universities, research institutes and government agencies, which usually curate and manage diverse samples. To address this problem, we developed an open source registration and management system to identify geo-samples unambiguously and to manage their metadata and data systematically. The system supports the linking of samples and sample collections to the real world features from where they were collected, as well as to their data and reports on the Web. This paper describes the implementation of the system including its underlying design considerations, and its applications. The system was built upon the International Geo Sample Number persistent identifier system with Semantic Web technologies. It has been implemented and tested with individual users and three sample repositories in the organization. ∗Corresponding author Email address: anusuriya.devaraju (Anusuriya Devaraju) Submitted to FOSS4G 2017 Conference Proceedings, Boston, USA. September 20, 2017 FOSS4G 2017 Academic Program Towards a Web-Enabled Geo-Sample Web