The API-01 project helps make research data easier to share and reuse across the ETH Domain by improving the connection between electronic laboratory notebooks (ELNs) and data repositories. Researchers at PSI, ETH Zurich and Empa generate large volumes of experimental data and record them using ELN systems such as SciLog, Aare (PSI's newer, broader-scoped platform for crystallography data acquisition -- previously Heidi --), and openBIS, but linking this data to the SciCat data repository previously required laborious manual export and upload. The goal of this project was to create open, API-based interfaces between SciCat and these three ELNs, so that experimental data and its associated metadata can move between systems.

Over the past two years, the project partners built open, API-based interfaces connecting SciCat with SciLog, Aare, and openBIS. A key part of this work involved discussing and agreeing on the right standard for transferring information between systems, with a particular focus on choosing an approach that allows data and metadata to be shipped together as a consistent, self-contained bundle, rather than as separate, loosely linked pieces. Building on this standard, the partners developed interfaces that make it possible to publish datasets, descriptions, and metadata directly from an ELN interface to SciCat. Previously, no such connection existed at all: researchers had no way to transfer their records to the repository other than through laborious manual export and upload. The work done in this project enabled the publication of data captured in different ELN environments to a shared data repository in a consistent way, using a common format across systems.

The project also encouraged closer collaboration between data service providers across the ETH Domain, improving shared understanding of how to store, preserve, and connect research data in support of Open Research Data principles.

In the final phase of the project, the focus is on closing the remaining deliverables, collecting users’ feedback, and writing documentation.