Research workflows, paradata, and information visualisation: feedback on an exploratory integration of issues and practices - MEMORIA IS

The paper presents an exploratory web information system developed as a reaction to practical and epistemological questions, in the context of a scientific unit studying the architectural heritage (from both the historical sciences perspective, and an engineering science standpoint). The article presents the methodological and analytical potential of this system for the description, analysis and information sharing of research workflows.

The MEMORIA prototype is first and foremost an effort to build a tool that should help us to ensure the traceability, transmissibility and verifiability of scientific results and fulfil the challenges of open science (providing free access to the content produced). The specificity of the system is to empower a formal characterisation of processes that led to this or that research result by listing the most important elements necessary for a proper understanding of the result.  An important point is the ambition to deploy visual interfaces providing access to resources and enabling direct analysis of the information collected. Ultimately, the project aims to depict a cognitive and methodological approaches behind scientific results using the possibilities offered by Information Visualisation.

The paper presents and defines the key concepts behind our approach and describes how they develop in practice. The theoretical aspects are illustrated with practical examples. The paper concludes with an analysis of the benefits and potential of the systematic approach to scientific process documentation that we introduce, highlighting its advantages and discussing its limitations.