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. 2024 Feb;24(2):131-137.
doi: 10.1089/ast.2023.0067.

Enabling Data Discovery with the Astrobiology Resource Metadata Standard

Shawn R Wolfe  1 , Barbara Lafuente  2 , Richard M Keller  1 , Angela M Detweiler  3 , Thomas F Bristow  1 , Mary N Parenteau  1 , Kevin Boydstun  1 , Christopher E Dateo  1 , David J Des Marais  1 , Linda L Jahnke  1 , Sara Rojo  1 , Nathan Stone  4 , Mark Vorobets  1
Affiliations

Enabling Data Discovery with the Astrobiology Resource Metadata Standard

Shawn R Wolfe et al. Astrobiology. 2024 Feb.

Abstract

As scientific investigations increasingly adopt Open Science practices, reuse of data becomes paramount. However, despite decades of progress in internet search tools, finding relevant astrobiology datasets for an envisioned investigation remains challenging due to the precise and atypical needs of the astrobiology researcher. In response, we have developed the Astrobiology Resource Metadata Standard (ARMS), a metadata standard designed to uniformly describe astrobiology "resources," that is, virtually any product of astrobiology research. Those resources include datasets, physical samples, software (modeling codes and scripts), publications, websites, images, videos, presentations, and so on. ARMS has been formulated to describe astrobiology resources generated by individual scientists or smaller scientific teams, rather than larger mission teams who may be required to use more complex archival metadata schemes. In the following, we discuss the participatory development process, give an overview of the metadata standard, describe its current use in practice, and close with a discussion of additional possible uses and extensions.

Keywords: Long tail; Metadata; Open science.

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Conflict of interest statement

No competing financial interests exist.

Figures

FIG. 1.
FIG. 1.
Top-level elements of an ARMS AstroBiology Resource (ABResource), with identification metadata on the left and content metadata on the right.
FIG. 2.
FIG. 2.
Subset of ARMS metadata for (a) The NASA Ames PAH IR Spectroscopic Database (Allamandola et al., 2022) and (b) Lipid Biomarkers from Microbial Mats on the McMurdo Ice Shelf, Antarctica: Signatures for Life in the Cryosphere (Bauersachs et al., 2022), with a detail of the Fieldwork Location map. Only the leaf (terminal) nodes are displayed for the keywords.
FIG. 3.
FIG. 3.
Excerpt of AHED online tool to create ARMS metadata.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. AHED Team. Astrobiology Habitable Environments Database. NASA, Washington, DC; 2023a. Available from: https://ahed.nasa.gov [Last accessed 3/10/2023].
    1. AHED Team. Astrobiology Resource Metadata Standard. NASA, Washington, DC; 2023b. Available from: https://ahed.nasa.gov/help/help-arms [Last accessed 3/10/2023].
    1. Allamandola L, Bauschlicher C, Boersma C, et al. . The NASA Ames PAH IR Spectroscopic Database. Astrobiology Habitable Environment Database. NASA, Washington, DC; 2022; Available from: 10.48667/6p1n-w007 [Last accessed 10/3/2023]. - DOI
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    1. Bauersachs T, Evans T, Grotheer H, et al. . Lipid Biomarkers from Microbial Mats on the McMurdo Ice Shelf, Antarctica: Signatures for Life in the Cryosphere. Astrobiology Habitable Environment Database. NASA, Washington, DC, 2022; 10.48667/r1zs-v785 [Last accessed 10/3/2023]. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

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