V2P2repository: a "place" to store, search and share data from research on plant-microorganism-virus interactions.

Managing large amount of data is a challenge for many research institutes. The problem is related not only to storage and preservation, but also, and mainly, to retrieving and making available the data. The difficulty is even higher when data are not homogeneous and not digitized. V2P2repository has been designed to face this challenge. V2P2repository is an open source/open access platform for storing, accommodating, preserving and making accessible different types of data produced by scientific research in the field of plant-microrganisms-virus interactions.The "repository" was chosen as the best storage technology for the platform needs, since it allows ingesting and handling of objects from different sources, metadata cataloguing and semantic relationships.V2P2repository contains images from optical and electronic microscopy of plant disease symptoms, plant, fungal and insect tissues, plant viruses and insect vectors, all provided with detailed descriptions and all linked with relationships to the other objects of the repository such as virus and fungal strain collections, antibody list, protocols, publications... This structure will allow users to extensively search all the data, starting from different points and reaching different deepness of search.The repository and its front-end are based on open source software and the project outcomes will be released as open access. Fedora (Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture) Commons, chosen as framework for the repository, can support large amounts of data, OAI-PMH compliant, programmable operations of ingesting, semantics description of relationships between objects, expandable and customizable architectural models. According to ROAR (Registry of Open Access Repositories) V2P2 will be one of the first repositories to use Fedora Commons not only for text and publication archives.This work is partially funded by MIUR (Ministero dell'Istruzione, dell'Università e della Ricerca), Progetti annuali (L.6/2000) D.D. 369/Ric. del 26/06/2012.