Report on Provenance

Each  publication  in  structural  biology  is  derived  from a series of  processing  steps,  using  data  from  structural  experiments which in turn use  samples  produced  by  “wet”  laboratory  operations.  For  purposes  of  data  reuse  and  reproducibility  of  results,  it  is  desirable  to  record  this  whole  chain  of  custody.  Current  practice  falls  far  short of this. (See project deliverable D7.9.)

The W3C standard PROV-O  is designed to support the recording and sharing of such information. We have developed mechanisms for automatically saving this information, storing it, and viewing it.  Once the necessary take up is achieved, so that provenance data is recorded, this will allow a user looking at structural results to see the processing steps and, back along the chain of custody, the experimental data.