Dr Jens Klump1, Dr Lesley Wyborn2, Mr Matthias Liffers3
1CSIRO Mineral Resources, Perth, Australia, 2Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, 3ARDC, Perth, Australia
The 2021 National Research Infrastructure Roadmap recognises the importance of samples and scientific collections as key components in the research ecosystem.
“Physical collections are a vital resource for research and underpin activities that range from health and medical research to ecology and agriculture. Physical collections of specimens and taxonomy are also critical to support the identification of biosecurity risks and determine action, supporting Australia’s environmental and climate adaptation strategy.” (Chapter 6: Potential for step-change).
Our view of this system is often informed by the end of a sample’s lifecycle when it enters an archival collection. However, many processes and procedures happen before this accession into an archival collection, for example, subsamples derived from a primary sample along the research data lifecycle: these relationships are hard to trace if the identifier is applied on curation.
The value of linking samples and other research artefacts like data derived from the sample, and the literature interpreting it, has been recognised and best practices for this cross-linking are emerging. DataCite introduced “physical object” as a new resource type for its DOI metadata and has entered a partnership with the IGSN Organisation (IGSN e.V.) to develop best practices for identifying and describing samples.
The ARDC Information Management for Physical Samples Community of Practice was established to help determine best practices. This BoF aims to bring together anyone working with physical samples in any discipline to see what their priority topics are for defining best practices, including enabling accreditation to them and their funders.
Biography:
Jens Klump is a geochemist by training and leads the Exploration Through Cover Research Group in CSIRO Mineral Resources based in Perth, Western Australia. In his work on data infrastructures, Jens covers the entire chain of digital value creation from data acquisition to data analysis with a focus on data in minerals exploration. This includes automated data and metadata capture, sensor data integration, both in the field and in the laboratory, data processing workflows, and data provenance, but also data analysis by statistical methods, machine learning and numerical modelling.
Jens earned degrees in geology and in oceanography from the University of Cape Town (UCT) and received his PhD in marine geology from the University of Bremen, Germany.