Advancing Open Sciencewith NII Research Data CloudR esearch C enter for
O pen S cience and Data Platform

The Research Center for Open Science and Data Platform(RCOS) was established at the National Institute ofInformatics (NII) for the purpose of developing andmanaging research data infrastructure, thereby laying thefoundation for open science in Japan.
Scientiﬁc research is shifting toward a new paradigm, one
in which there is open collaboration and the free sharingof research publications and data within academia andNational Institute of Informatics
Reseach Center for Open Science and Data Platform
�-�-� Hitotsubashi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo ���-����, JAPANrcos-oﬃce@nii.ac.jp
https://rcos.nii.ac.jp/beyond. This new paradigm is commonly referred to as
open science.

Open science will accelerate progress inscientiﬁc research, helping researchers to meet the social
challenges of today.

NII Research Data Cloud (NII RDC)
anagement

Experimental Apparatus

Data Collection

Flexible and Reproducible Research Data Management
GakuNin RDM is a regional research data management (RDM) service employing the authentication andauthorization infrastructure (AAI) GakuNin for Japanese academic institutions and researchers. In thisservice, we have implemented many useful functions for the management and sharing of research data as
Web services using cloud computing resources and storage. The service oﬀers essential functions for RDM,
including ﬁle preview, version control, private data sharing and access control, and local-directorysynchronization. It also provides many plug-ins for external research tools and functions for creating
research logs, allowing for the preservation of research integrity. Expansions and updates are madecontinually. Users can easily construct customized, institution-speciﬁc RDM systems using the GakuNin
RDM, in conformance with internal research data policies and security policies.

Search Service

Data A naly sis

Data Sh ar ing

Management ofResearch Data
Preservation of
Research Chronology

Publication

Research Data

SearchRelation-Aware Research Data Discovery

CiNii Research is a platform that can be used to search for scholarly resources, including research
publications and datasets produced in research carried out in Japan. This platform constructs alarge-scale “scholarly knowledge graph” that elucidates various relationships among articles,
datasets, researchers and projects. For instance, when article is published with supplemental
datasets, this article is linked with its authors and its datasets. With this knowledge graph, CiNii
Research not only helps researchers ﬁnd research datasets and articles relevant to their daily
research activities but also helps them obtain ideas for new research topics.

Data Management
Plan

Prevention of Scientiﬁc
Misconduct and Fraud

Research Papers
MetadataManagement

Research Data Publication HubWEKO�, a research data publication platform, is a next-generation repository system for
publishing research results, such as data and research papers, that their owners have chosen tomake openly accessible. Utilizing WEKO� with the GakuNin RDM, researchers can readily publish
their research results, and thereby participate in open science. WEKO� also provides thenecessary tools for operating and managing institutional repositories, including user-deﬁned
metadata support, customizable ingest workﬂow, and persistent identiﬁer assignment. WEKO�
provides cutting-edge tools for repositories to Japanese universities and research institutions
through the JAIRO Cloud, a cloud service for institutional repositories.

Desktop/
Laptop Computers

Version Control

Ingest Workﬂow

Usage Statistics
Collections

Metadata

Scholarly Information
Services

Institutional Repositories

Publication ofResearch Results Contents

Metadata
Aggregation

Relatio nship
Extr actio n

Knowledge Graph
Construction

Persistent-identiﬁer DBs
Subject-speciﬁc DBs

Knowledge Graph
Construction
Search Service
External Search Services

The GakuNin RDM service manages all types ofdata — survey data from articles, data fromprevious research, data obtained fromexperimental apparatus, IoT sensor data, dataobtained from computer simulations — in a uniﬁed
manner. This service records all logs concerning
data input/output and research operation. It helps
to prevent scientiﬁc misconduct and fraud bypreserving data from all research activities. It also
allows for the sharing of data among collaborators
through the version control function and various
preview functions. In addition, the GakuNin RDM
plug-in can bind to external cloud storage andresearch tools, including data analysis software. It
provides an ideal platform for collaboration
between experimental and theoretical researchers.

WEKO� facilitates the preservation and publicationof research results, categorized according toinstitution and research ﬁeld. It makes data citableby assigning a digital object identiﬁer (DOI) to
research data, research papers, and bulletin
papers. It enables access to speciﬁc versions ofcontents through a version-control feature andallows for customizable ingest workﬂow, forexample facilitating workﬂow in accordance withthe operation policies of an institution andworkﬂow consistent with an on-campus system,
through a customizable ingest workﬂow feature.
WEKO� allows for the combination of multiple
repositories and databases in a university into one
repository with multiple facets through use of acollection management feature.

CiNii Research aggregates a wide variety of
metadata related to research activities. Sources of
metadata contain NII scholarly information
services, namely CiNii and KAKEN, institutional
repositories based on WEKO� and other software,
databases for persistent identiﬁers, including JaLC
and ORCID, and subject-speciﬁc databases. CiNii
Research then extracts relationships amongarticles, datasets, researchers and projects fromthe aggregated metadata to construct and enhance
our scholarly knowledge graph. Researchers canobtain relevant information from the knowledge
graph using its simple search interface.