I (Don't) Know What You Did Last Summer: A Framework for Ubiquitous Research Preservation

Paper in proceeding, 2023

Research preservation is a pillar for knowledge transfer, science reproducibility and saving time by reusing existing resources. However, human compliance with efficient capturing strategies is a key barrier to creating complete scientific repositories. To circumvent this issue, we introduce the term: Ubiquitous Research Preservation (URP), describing automated knowledge capturing and retrieval in computational science. We also propose a framework composed of three models for designing URP systems (URPS) to 1) understand users' interaction and data governance, 2) propose technical pipelines for data management, and 3) understand users' sharing practices. Our work is a theoretical reflection on our past experiences in designing URPS. We plan future evaluation by using the framework to analyze existing URPS. We expect a positive impact from using URPS on researchers' sense-making and ability to share findings and resources. Our framework is a checklist for design decisions needed to build successful URPS.