Interaction with the Qresp database

The Qresp database focuses on the reproducibility of experimental and computational results presented in scientific papers. Users are able to upload the contents of published papers in the form of datasets, charts, scripts, tools, and notebooks. The idea is to ensure that every table and figure is accurately reproducible. On a technical level, the figures, tables, and the numerical data of papers are stored elsewhere and the Qresp server only stores the meta information such as the publication, authors, scripts used to manipulate the data, and references (links) to the actual data. A MatD3 server could be used to host the data, with Qresp entries pointing to that data. We have implemented extensions to Qresp that allow the user to upload the paper contents using the Qresp GUI, such that the main data is stored on a MatD3 server, the metadata is stored on a Qresp server, and the paper contents are browsable on both servers.

Setting up a Qresp instance

Most of the information on how to set up Qresp is found at http://qresp.org/. Here we provide details specific to the MatD3/Qresp connection. Specifically, Qresp can be configured using an .env file similar to the MatD3 database. Only two parameters are required to establish the connection. Here is an example:

MATD3_URL=https://materials.hybrid3.duke.edu
HOST_URL=https://qresp.hybrid3.duke.edu

That is, the URL of the MatD3 server and that of the Qresp server.

Migrating data

There are three ways to share data between the MatD3 and Qresp servers.

  • Creating the Qresp and MatD3 entries at the same time. In the Qresp Curator, at the “Connect to Server” step, click on “Use MatD3”. Then, when selecting charts (equivalent to data sets in MatD3), clicking on “Add new” allows you to create a data set in the MatD3 database and immediately import the metadata of that data set to Qresp in the form of a chart. The rest of the curation follows the standard Qresp workflow (see url{http://qresp.org/}).
  • Importing existing MatD3 data sets into Qresp. Same as before, click on “Use MatD3” at the “Connect to Server” step. Now, instead of selecting “Add new”, enter the ID of a data set and hit “Submit” to turn that data set into a chart. The data set ID is found at the bottom of each data set at the MatD3 website. The rest of the curation process stays the same
  • Exporting Qresp entries to the MatD3 database. Qresp charts can be exported to the MatD3 server if applicable (e.g., they must be specific to HOIPs). At the Qresp website, click on “Export” and browse the articles as you normally would. Except now there is an “Export to the MatD3 database” button next to each chart. Clicking on it brings you to the MatD3 data submission page, where you need to fill in additional fields to convert the Qresp chart into a MatD3 data set. The need to fill in additional information stems from the fact that Qresp uses a noSQL database for storing data, whereas MatD3 is based on a SQL database. That is, were are moving from unstructured to structured data.