New Digital Science tool aims to help researchers organise data

Digital Science has launched Projects, which it describes as 'the only data tool designed specifically for scientific researchers that enables them to organise their research outputs in a safe, simple and structured way'.

The tool promises to help researchers view a chronological visual timeline of their research activity and recover past files seamlessly; manually or automatically take “snapshots” of their work so that they can restore previous versions of files; store their data files in a simple, organised way within a desktop drive; and flag, star and take notes on their data files to distinguish important files and to optimise search results.

The tool is initially only available to Mac users. Timo Hannay, managing director of Digital Science, explained, 'We want people to start benefiting from using Projects as soon as possible, so we’ve released it on Mac only to begin with. We’ll be releasing Windows and Linux versions as fast as we can, along with other features including sharing, collaboration, and integration with other research tools.'

He went on to say that the company plans to: link to open-access repositories, make remote backups easier for an even greater peace of mind, and make it easier to share and collaborate with others on projects and experiments.

Mark Hahnel, product owner for Projects and founder of figshare commented, 'Projects will fill a critical gap in an academic researcher’s arsenal of desktop tools. It will aid researchers at the starting point of the research data lifecycle and ensure all their work can be attributed from the outset, avoiding any issues regarding the provenance of research in the long run. We're really excited about the development roadmap for Projects, which will shortly integrate fully into our community-driven open-data project –figshare, – to ensure every scientific researcher gains credit for all their research.'

For more insight into the Digital Science businesses and tools, see the profile article in the up-coming June/July issue of Research Information