R4L Project-related Technologies

The R4L Probity Service is a secure provenance service for laboratory-based experimental data and results. It enables researchers to register their findings and can guarantee the priority and provenance of registered data through an efficient cross-registration mechanism which uses a number of distributed probity registries.

The service is implemented using a service-oriented architecture with different Web services interacting with probity registries in the registration and cross-registration processes. The main functionalities provided by the probity service include standard registration, browsing and querying of the registries, and the background cross-registration. A standard registration service takes the registrant (user) id (e.g. a scan of passport photo page) and the data which it encrypts and stores in a probity registry along with any relevant context information. The cross-registration process then occurs in the background between different probity registries and supports potential cross verification of data/results ownership claims by users. The priority of registrations is guaranteed not by the time but by the cross-registration mechanism.

At its current stage the R4L probity service has several registries set up in the School of Chemistry and the School of Electronics and Computer Science, which it manages via command line and Web interface clients to store, query and browse claims in probity registries. It is also being integrated with the GNU Eprints software as a provenance service on R4L eprint archives. Command line clients and Web interface clients support user interaction with the service.

Here is the link to the Probity Service's Web interface.