Scientific data searching, sharing and retrieval

TL;DR

This paper discusses Mercury, a web-based system designed for efficient scientific data searching, sharing, and retrieval, highlighting its development, capabilities, and widespread adoption across US federal agencies.

Contribution

It introduces Mercury as an advanced, reusable toolset for scientific data management, expanding its use beyond NASA to multiple federal projects.

Findings

Mercury supports metadata management and indexing.

It enables efficient data discovery and sharing.

Used across 14 projects in US federal agencies.

Abstract

In the recent years, there has been significant advancement in the areas of scientific data management and retrieval techniques, especially in terms of standards and protocols for archiving data. Oak Ridge National Laboratory Distributed Data Archive Center for biogeochemical dynamics is making efforts in building advanced toolsets for these purposes. Mercury is a web-based metadata harvesting, data discovery and access system, built for researchers to search for, share and obtain biogeochemical data. Originally developed for single National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) project, Mercury now used over fourteen different projects across three US federal agencies. Mercury renders various capabilities including metadata management, indexing, searching, data sharing, and also software reusability.