The ARDC Community Data Lab architecture: Research Software deployment principles and patterns for integrity, reproducibility and sustainability

This article sets out a principles-driven architectural pattern for research software infrastructure and architecture for the ARDC Community Data Lab (CDL).  The architecture is in line with the CARE and FAIR principles and with an emphasis on sustainability. 

The CDL is summarised on the web page: https://ardc.edu.au/project/ardc-community-data-lab/

The ARDC Community Data Lab will enable the sharing of an increasing range of tools and datasets, provide environments for running the tools, and options for researchers to analyse and annotate datasets. It will be a platform that not only shares a number of instruments and infrastructures, but also provides governance and procedures that have protocols, and practices for managing and recording research as a process.

The ARDC Community Data Lab will facilitate cross-institutional collaboration, enabling researchers to work collaboratively in groups and conduct open research.

For more information about the CDL see the Phase 1 project plan  and the solutions architecture document for the first phase of the CDL (Sefton, 2023), which discussed how implementation of the FAIR principles could be supported by technical architecture.        

The following issues are crucial to the CDL project but are outside the focus area for this architecture document:
Researcher engagement and outreach
Prioritising the order in which disciplines, tools and techniques get support
Specific discussion of Phase 2 initial work packages.

Audience
This document is primarily aimed at the ARDC and its contractors as well as partners such as software developers engaged in technical implementation and researchers who work hands-on with code and data in the course of doing their research. The principles here are important for a generalist research audience but we would expect that these will be translated as part of the engagement process for the CDL.