D2I has a strong presence in provenance and metadata for scientific data
The ability to routinely collect provenance information about the data products that are produced during the scientific discovery process can have a transformational impact on scientific discovery.
Digital data provenance
Provenance collection is, in essence, a form of automatic metadata generation. When metadata information collection is automated and done at the point of data product generation, what results is more accurate and complete information being collected, largely because it removes the need of involving users in annotating after-the-fact.
As digital library solutions for scientific data collections become more common, as trends indicate is happening already, it will be important that specialized metadata catalogs built up around e-Science discovery, such as the provenance database, be utilized in archival collection for the rich contextual metadata they contain.
Often with collaborators at IU and at other institutions, the Data to Insight Center is developing tools for provenance generation and collection and case-based reasoning. The tools and collected data are also available for download for wider community use.