A Lightweight Framework for Research Data Management

We describe a framework for managing live research data involving two major components. First, a system for the scalable scheduling and execution of automated policies for moving, organizing, and archiving data. Second, a system for managing metadata to facilitate curation and discovery with minimal change to existing workflows. Our approach is guided by four main principles: 1) to be non-invasive and to allow for easy integration into existing workflows and computing environments; 2) to be built on established, cloud-aware, open-source tools; 3) to be easily extensible and configurable, and thus, adaptable to different academic disciplines; and 4) to integrate with and take advantage of infrastructure and services available on academic campuses and research computing environments. These principles give our solution a well-defined place along the spectrum of research data management software such as sophisticated electronic lab notebooks and science gate-ways. Our lightweight and flexible data management framework provides for curation and preservation of research data within a lab, department or university cyberinfrastructure.