Through the 2021 partnership between DataCite and IGSN e.V., DataCite services can be used to register International Generic Sample Numbers (IGSN IDs) for material samples. Over the coming months, the blog series ‘IGSN ID Implementation Exemplars’ will showcase sample management workflows developed by the community that incorporate IGSN ID registration. In each post, we offer practical guidance on how to work alongside disciplinary sample experts to register IGSN IDs within DataCite services.
RSpace is an open-source research platform for institutional research data management, maintained by Research Space. It consists of an electronic lab notebook (ELN) and inventory management system that integrate with various tools, enabling you to connect and access various aspects of your existing workflows and build upon them in ways that enhance their FAIRness. A major component of RSpace is the Inventory system—a customisable and mobile-friendly sample management system. In collaboration with DataCite, RSpace has prototyped a seamless integration of IGSN IDs within the Inventory module such that you can naturally draft, edit the sample metadata for, and publish IGSN IDs. RSpace is not only a DataCite Registered Service Provider, it is the first service provider on the program to offer IGSN ID registration services to DataCite Members and Consortium Organizations.
The design approach to developing the Inventory module has been to focus on usability by talking with institutions about their real-life research and material sample workflows. It became clear that a lot of the time, it is hard for researchers to approach FAIRifying their work because of there being various points of entry and this can create friction: there is a particular tool for registering one resource; and then another tool for analysis; and yet another tool for curating, archiving, or something else. RSpace has therefore worked extensively to fully embed IGSN IDs within the Inventory module, such that researchers can manage persistent Identifiers (PIDs) for their samples from the same place where they’re already working with their sample data. So what does that look like in practice?
Firstly, RSpace has ELN functionalities; for example, importing existing content, keeping an organized record of your research, linking between entries, associating Data Management Plans, and exporting data bundles to repositories. It also has the Inventory module (Figure 1) that consists of several sample management analogues: a bench, containers, samples, and subsamples. The Inventory module thus lists all of your material samples and their storage environment, which can be searched and viewed in different formats. You can also create sample metadata templates, whereby you can choose what you want to represent by a material sample and specify metadata fields for objects of this type. By selecting a specific item to view, you can input both standard metadata such as storage temperature and location, as well as custom template fields, and manipulate any related object such as aliquots.
Importantly, every item in the Inventory module has an Identifier section, and by clicking on the plus icon, you can create a draft IGSN ID associated with this object (Figure 2). The metadata properties follow from the recommendations by the IGSN–DataCite partnership (see DataCite Support), with most mandatory properties automatically populated based on information already known by RSpace (Figure 3), including the addition of ORCID iDs and ROR IDs.
Looking at an example of a complete IGSN ID record for a material sample (Figure 4), you can see its collection date and a description have been included, in addition to several subjects together with their URI values. The sample also has an alternate identifier; you may be using a different, local ID within your workflow, and thus can ensure this is recorded with the sample. To capture geolocations (e.g., where the sample was collected), the Inventory module generates interactive maps from provided coordinates that enable you to not only define a polygon, a box, or a point, but also to add several locations if referring to different aspects of the sample is needed.
Once you start completing a sample metadata record, it will typically contain a lot of domain-specific information outside of the scope of the IGSN ID metadata submitted to DataCite. RSpace realized that if you are already filling in such domain-specific information about your sample within the Inventory module, automatically adding this metadata to the landing page hugely enhances reproducibility. A subsection of the Identifier section in the Inventory module simply lists all of the Inventory sample fields that can be included and gives you the option to display them on the landing page (Figure 5). The researcher does not have to go through a separate process of copying over values, instead, the process is centralized and available right from the sample page.
Inventory fields can be hidden or shown on the landing page retrospectively after publishing, and since this is a sample-level setting, the visibility of fields on other samples is not affected.
The publishing process in RSpace Inventory starts with a preview of the landing page to show you what the online metadata description will look like. Then, by clicking on ‘Publish’, you are given information about what happens to the metadata, the fact that it will now become public, and how to access and cite it. The Inventory module aims to make every single step highly explicit, provide a clear description of the DOI state of an IGSN ID, and always display actions that are contextually available, as it is essential that users of the system feel confident in making the right choices when sharing their data with the research community (Figure 6).
By publishing the IGSN ID within the Inventory module, it is registered in DataCite services with a DOI state of ‘Findable’—the IGSN ID metadata is passed to DataCite Fabrica and it is queryable in DataCite Commons—and its landing page is made publicly discoverable and accessible. The landing page is generated by RSpace, removing the burden of developing and supporting a landing page mechanism for institutions (Figure 7).
As a DataCite Registered Service Provider, RSpace takes actions on the behalf of an institution using its services, but an IGSN ID Catalog Repository account and the IGSN ID registered therein are fully within the institution’s control.
To set up the integration with your DataCite Repository account from the system administrator side, there is a settings panel (Figure 8) that only requires the DataCite Repository Account ID, Password, and Repository Prefix of an IGSN ID Catalog Repository. The configuration is completely obscured from researchers, which simplifies their workflow to simply using the integration. Additionally, the system administrator can connect to DataCite’s test version of its REST Application Programming Interface if they wish to test the integration first, or to run a mock exercise to help their institution figure out best practices when it comes to IGSN ID metadata usage and registration before registering real IGSN IDs.
RSpace made good use of the DataCite Support pages when developing its IGSN ID integration for the Inventory module. A really useful exercise for RSpace was also to write an interoperability guideline document in order to navigate confusions when working between an institution and a PID registration service as an integrator. Moreover, to assist institutions just beginning on their journey of IGSN ID adoption for material samples, DataCite and RSpace have recently published the guidance document, ‘Samples 101 – Getting started with managing your samples using IGSN IDs and RSpace’. These guidelines will be expanded to a white paper in the coming months. It is especially important to ensure all parties share an understanding of terminology and functionality related to IGSN IDs, and that a detailed understanding of user workflows is facilitated through ongoing engagement between institutions and those providing services.
RSpace is continuing to develop support for an end-to-end sample management workflow. For instance here are some issues that are currently being addressed:
- You can register IGSN IDs within the Inventory module if you are within your institution, but what if you are collecting the samples in the field and you are offline?
- What if you want to push out datasets from the RSpace ELN and you want to make sure that all associated IGSN IDs are recorded as metadata in the target repository?
- What if you want to push all of the material sample metadata from the Inventory module to be ultimately hosted by a domain-specific repository?
RSpace is also working on support for other PIDs and automatically linking between related entities within the system, such as PIDs for instruments and Research Resource Identifiers.
Please get in touch with RSpace via its contact form if you would like more information about IGSN ID registration within the RSpace Inventory module.
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