Nachträglich ist nicht gleich nachnutzbar: Ansätze für integrierte Prozessdokumentation im Forschungsalltag

Abstract

In order to make research data retrievable, it must be described with sufficient metadata. It is also necessary to include the context in which the research data has come into being, so that other scientists can reproduce the research data described by the metadata. However, the documentation of this origination process is often neglected due to a lack of time in everyday research. In addition, low-threshold support in day-to-day research is often missing. At present, some methods are being developed or about to be established. In this paper, software applications designed to facilitate documentation are presented and compared with the solution currently developed in the RePlay-DH project. The approach of the virtual research environment relies on cooperation via a shared platform. The electronic laboratory notebook supports documentation in the laboratory. In contrast to workflow tracking, workflow management defines a workflow before the individual work steps are carried out. Here, the focus is set on a process-accompanying documentation. The approach of the RePlay-DH project for a solution is to support documentation of the research process with metadata through simplified workflow tracking. Special emphasis is laid on the integration in the existing work processes of scientists and scholars and easy handling.