Reflection & Resonance
Research findings are increasingly shaped by algorithms. All stakeholders require transparent and reproducible epistemological processes.
In order to create trust, communication of findings demands transparency and comprehensibility - within the science system and into society. This shift must therefore not only be examined from a technical, but also from a societal and ethical perspective.
Exploration & Knowledge Organisation
To gain access to the abundance of information that is available today, search engines and sophisticated information processing applications are required. Semantic technologies are key enablers for findability, accessibility, interoperability, and re-use of ever-increasing amounts of research data.
Knowledge organisation requires formally sound methodologies to represent, organise, and manage domain specific as well as procedural knowledge. Semantic technologies provide a formal representation of knowledge contained in research data, thus facilitating the efficient integration of heterogeneous data sources. The growing adoption of AI-based knowledge mining technologies requires comprehensible and trustworthy AI algorithms (“explainable AI”). Both statistic and linguistic analysis methods as well as machine learning in combination with symbolic logic and interference mechanisms are applied.
Legal & Ethical Challenges
The digital transformation is shaped by data ethics, data protection, copyright and data law.
Emerging legal framework conditions need to be evaluated, as they may provide the means to make sensitive data collections available for subsequent use in a legally secure manner. This requires a thorough analysis of the involved research data and its legal and political context.
Tools & Processes
Assessment of acceptance and impact of digital tools tailored precisely to the needs of researchers and design of measures to increase the security awareness of researchers developing scientific software
The entire process from collection to publication and archiving of research data is affected by the transformation. Smart tools such as Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELN) support researchers in generating and providing interoperable and documented data with the ultimate goal of a data continuum. At the same time, the security of the processes and the security awareness of those involved must be intensified.