e-Lab Research Objects
Research Objects are the work objects of an e-Lab, and can be seen as a common currency, facilitating exchange and interoperation between e-Lab services. They could also be referred to as know as Reproducible Research Objects, Scientific Objects and EMOs (encapsulated myExperiment Objects). A Research Object aggregates digital content representing study, people, methods, materials and results.
A Research Object is more than just a packaging mechanism as it has some purpose, reason or rationale for the aggregation – it is the a story about an investigation (or experiment, or process).
Essential properties of a research object can include:
- the definition of the problem motivating the research;
- the research question;
- the design of the investigation;
- the investigators;
- the ethical approval, governance and support for the research;
- the population or material studied, and the conditions under which they were studied;
- the measurements observed, derived or collected from databases;
- a record of the steps used to transform the data into results (e.g. statistical scripts, or bioinformatic workflows);
- the results in numbers, words and pictures;
- finished documents about the results (e.g. papers, reports and slide-decks)