RS Business Rules

Business Rules from the RS tender

1. Original Research - Data and assets generated by research are private to the project and restricted to project members until published to the shared ResearchSpace repositories. Projects would be expected to publish this data to the shared repository at some stage (as soon as practicable and reasonable) and data would be shared on the repository at the end (decommissioning) of the project.
2. Established Data - Existing data and assets, for example accessible organisational collection data and associated images, should be uploaded to the shared ResearchSpace repository and be available to all projects. Some multimedia assets will require some access restrictions and this reflects the practical reality that some media assets are more likely to be subject to conditions and restrictions. However, ResearchSpace would always encourage free and unfettered access to cultural heritage data.
3. Open System Standards - the ResearchSpace tools should not be dependent on proprietary APIs. It should be possible to take any tool developed for use with open standard RDF data and incorporate that tool into ResearchSpace without substantial redevelopment. Similarly, tools developed specifically for ResearchSpace should be useable with little or no modification outside the ResearchSpace environment. This business rule ensures the open nature of ResearchSpace and keeps the RDF research tool model simple and accessible.
   • See OWLIM Dependencies
4. Image Restrictions - Images will require some security so that specified images can be hidden from some users but be available to others. This reflects the practical reality that some images are more likely to be subject to conditions and restrictions. It is anticipated that standard Digital Asset Management tools can be used to control image access without offending other ResearchSpace business rules. ResearchSpace will encourage sharing of digital media whenever possible.
5. Ontology Standard - In order to obtain a good level of data harmonisation and therefore allow effective exploration of data supplied from different sources, the ontology standard for all data will be the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CRM).
6. Use Cases - The main ResearchSpace elements of data, collaboration, analysis, and web publication should be both integrated but also available as separate functions to encourage a wide range of project and related use.
7. Open Source - New software created will be released to the community freely as open source. Existing open source tools should, if possible, be utilised for ResearchSpace development.