The open ecosystem of e-infrastructures for data discovery: a review

Research data are among the fastest growing openly accessible scientific outputs on the web. While we have made great strides when it comes to accessibility of research data, discoverability is still one of the key challenges for open science: in many ways, we cannot cash the cheques written by this movement, if we do not increase the visibility of research outputs. Many research data discovery services have thus emerged, often embracing the principles of openness. They aim to make data discovery more effective, address new user needs, and exploit new technologies. This paper aims to support the conception and design of such tools by providing a descriptive framework of the current open ecosystem for research data discovery. In this framework we define the building blocks of the ecosystem (actors, roles and features of discovery services), describe how those interact with each other, and how they support the different discovery needs of researchers. We analyse the current practices of research data discovery to identify gaps in both the infrastructure and in users’ research strategy. We further analyse opportunities for innovative solutions to address the crisis of research data discoverability, improve data discovery and contribute to the evolution of the open ecosystem.