SARA Service : Long-Term Access and Publishing of Research Data and Software Artefacts

Abstract

The SARA project (Software Archiving of Research Artefacts) aims to develop a new scientific service that allows long-term access and publishing of research data and scientific software. Its main focus is on software tools that support the processing and analysis of research data. In biological research, for example, measured data is collected and processed with the support of computers. The matching version of this software is required to faithfully reproduce the research results. Within Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, the different versions of newly developed software need to be continually stored in order to document the progress of development.The service is designed to support the research process and encourage researchers to archive or publish preliminary results during their research, particularly regarding software tools as part of the research process. This allows other researchers to access the whole development history of these tools which are often locally developed, or at least modified, by researchers themselves. Thereby, the collected research data, together with the matching versions of accompanying software tools, are reproducible for further research. The service is being prototypically developed for Computer Science, Electrical Engineering and Biology and is planned to be open to all scientific disciplines after the evaluation phase ends.