Project Description
The fundamental idea behind the project was to create a system that helps scientists in documenting and reusing their own research workflow in a way that enables them to reconstruct their own ideas within the research workflow (“replay”) without any additional effort. This replay should be possible without having to learn complex command line tools or methods known from software development. A direct facilitation of versioning control systems such as git, would not only be too complex, but would also allow for too many different options for the single user not accustomed to such software.
This is where the tools developed within the project Replay-DH come into play. Our system not only simplifies complex versions of control software mechanisms for a certain type of use, but ensures conformity and integrity. New possibilities arise by adding metadata to the scientific data during the process, rather than in retrospect. Metadata needed for the description of certain objects, tools or processing steps is best documented at the point when it is used. Our client will help document all necessary metadata during the process, rather than just when an archive is being created.
A generic approach is being pursued in cooperation with scientists from the University of Stuttgart in the field of computer linguistics. The results gained from this project can easily be applied to the text processing areas within the humanities and social sciences. Nonetheless, the system allows for implementing metadata schemes covering processes in other fields of study.
Apart from developing tools accompanying the scientist in his workflow, the project also aims at creating basic service definitions and offering the results as Open Source, building a link for future services and expert advice, thereby transforming the project status into a permanent service and integrating the tools and services within standard research data infrastructures and services.
The source code of the RePlay-DH client is available on GitHub.
Project Partners
University of Stuttgart:
University Library (UB) of Stuttgart: Dr. Helge Steenweg, Sibylle Hermann
Institute for Natural Language Processing (IMS), Clarin-D-Centre: Prof. Dr. Jonas Kuhn
Ulm University:
Institute of Information Resource Management: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Stefan Wesner
Communication- and Information Centre (Team Research Data Management): Uli Hahn
Project Duration
01.01.2016 - 30.06.2019