Ariadne is a European Commission-funded project aiming to improve access to archaeological data through a collaborative e-infrastructure, which facilitates data sharing and integration across various disciplines. With a budget of €6.5 million, the project launched in February 2013 and involves 24 partners from 18 European countries. It addresses challenges in data management, access, and interoperability, promoting open data practices within the archaeological community.

1. ARIADNE is funded under the European Commission's Seventh Framework Programme
What is an archaeological research infrastructure and why do we need it? Aims and challenges of ARIADNE
Edeltraud Aspöck Guntram Geser

2. Content of talk
•What is an e-infrastructure for research?
•Why ARIADNE?
•Challenges of data sharing

3. e-Infrastructures for research
•Provide researchers with easy and controlled online access to
–Data and information resources
–Remote instruments
–Collaboration tools
•… across geographical, disciplinary and organizational boundaries

4. e-Infrastructures for research
•Different focus / types
–Data infrastructure
–Distributed computing (Grid, Cloud)
–Virtual research environment / community

5. ARIADNE (FP7-Infrastructures-2012-1-313193)
•Runs 4 years (started 02/2013)
•FP7 Instrument „Integrating Activity“
•Focus on archaeological datasets
•Funding 6.5m €
•Coordinators
•Prof. Franco Niccolucci, University of Florence
•Prof. Julian Richards, University of York
•Website: www.ariadne-infrastructure.eu

6. Why ARIADNE?
Community
building
•24 partners of 18 European countries
•Open to other participants, e.g.
–Transnational Access Programme
–Special Interest Groups

7. Why ARIADNE?
ADS: 20.000 grey literature reports,
1.200.000 records
ARACHNE: 500.000+ images, 250.000 objects
GALLICA: several thousand reports
FASTI online: 12.000 reports
Collaboration on data sharing
eDNA: Dendrochrono- logy data (DCCD)
•mobilize
•integrate
•make accessible (some examples)
Your data
SIGECweb: 270.000 records (archaeology)

8. ARIADNE overall goals…
to overcome the fragmentation of archaeological data repositories and to foster a culture of data sharing and re-using

9. EC 2012 survey „Do you agree with the following statement: Generally speaking, there is NO access problem to research data in Europe?”
European Commission, Online survey on scientific information in the digital age, 2012. Total survey participants: 1140. Germany: 422, France: 120, UK: 127, Italy: 95, NL: 39, Austria: 38, Belgium: 36, Greece: 27, …. (42 countries)
87% „Disagree“ or „Disagree strongly“

10. Why the „access problem“
•Behaviour of researchers contrary to what advocates of proper management and sharing of data would like them to do
•Most re-useable data remains locked away
–On personal computers
–Portable storage carriers
–Restricted access servers
–Published with paper (i.e. supplemental material)
–Only 6–8% in community archive/repository

11. Where do researchers store/archive data?
PARSE.Insight survey 2009: 1202 respondents from different research domains and countries

12. Where do researchers store/archive data?
• “Science” journal 2011 survey of peer reviewers: 1700 responses
– international and multi-disciplinary
• “Where do you archive most of the data generated in your lab or
for your research?”
Note: archived ≠ curated
50.2% in our lab
38.5% university server
7.6% community repository
3.2% “other”
0.5% not stored

13. Driver for change: Funding policies
•High-level policies & initiatives
–OECD, EC Communications, Research Data Alliance,…
•National research funding agencies
–Open Access mandates extended to data
–Mandatory data management plans
•Austria
–Since 2013, Austrian Science Funds (FWF): open data mandate
–But no national data repository for archaeology!

14. Open Data – criteria
•Accessible
–Online, not necessarily without registration
•Reusable
–not summarized data (i.e. figures, charts, etc.) canned in publications
–state: raw, cleaned, normalized,… (accord. to practice)
–open format (e.g. not PDF doc)
•Openly licensed (e.g. CC-BY, if other no NonDerivative!)
•For free – yes, but somebody has to pay to ensure sustainability of repositories

15. Word cloud of presentation titles
archaeological
data
research
developing
ARIANDE
infrastructure
interoperability
integration
networks
services
archiving
excavation
frameworks
visual/ization
beyond
crossing
borders
boundaries
international
administrative
local
media.REIFF
DYAS
DARIAH
ADS
SDI
e-Depot
IANUS
INSPIRE
linked data
documenting
extending
ontologies
concepts
CIDOC CRM
mapping
database
comparing
recording
publication
management
creation
sensing
European common Dutch Germany Greek Swedish
humanities
centre
monuments sites
OAIS
support
IT-guidelines
component
systems

16. Challenges /1
•Documentation practices and semantics
–different methods
–different languages
–different concepts / semantics
–different definitions of time periods, …
How to integrate data from different countries so that they can be cross-searched?
Related presentations:
•T. Oikarinen
•G. Mossakowski
•M. Doerr / G. Hiebel
•A. Masur / K. May

17. Challenges /2
•Data management & access
–Heterogeneous data (different types)
–Growing volumes
–High quality data + metadata
–Licensing
–Open access
How to manage data from project level to open access repositories?
Related presentations:
•F. Schäfer/ M. Trognitz (IANUS)
•U. Jakobsson (SND)
•H. Hollander (e- Depot)

18. Challenges /3
•E-infrastructure components and interoperability
–Humanities and natural sciences
–Text and visual data (images, 3D, video,…)
–Local and remote sensing data
–Big and Small (“long tail”) data...
How to make „interoperable“ data of different domains, types, scales…?
Related presentations:
•M. Charno / J. Richards
•C. Dallas / D. Gavrilis
•A. Corns / R. Shaw
•R. Scopigno / M.Dellepiane
•P. Constantopoulos / C.Dallas
•A. Volkmann

19. ARIADNE is a project funded by the European Commission under the Community’s Seventh Framework Programme, contract no. FP7-INFRASTRUCTURES-2012-1-313193.
The views and opinions expressed in this presentation are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the European Commission.