The French initiative for scientific cores virtual curating : a user-oriented integrated approach

Managing scientific data is a crucial issue for modern science. This concerns particularly the conservation of high value geological samples: cores. International scientific programs are leading an intense effort to solve this problem and propose detailed high standard work- and dataflows including core handling and curating. However, there is currently no consensual standard for sample and associated metadata management. The national excellence equipment program CLIMCOR aims at developing French facilities for scientific coring (ice, marine and continental). As part of it, we led a reflexion about cores and associated metada curating. Our aim is to conserve all metadata from fieldwork in an integrated cyber-environment which could evolve toward laboratory-acquired data storage. In that aim, our demarche was conducted through a close relationship with field operators and core curators, in order to propose user-oriented solutions.The national core curating initiative currently proposes a single web portal to store field data. For forthcoming samples, we propose a mobile application to capture technical and scientific metadata on the field or in cruise. This application is linked with a unique coring tools library and is adapted to most coring devices, including multiple sections and holes coring operations.Those field data can be uploaded automatically to the national portal, but also referenced through international standards or persistent identifiers (IGSN - SESAR, ORCID) and INSPIRE schema and displayed in international portals (currently, NOAA IMLGS).In this paper, we present the architecture of the integrated system, future perspectives and the approach we adopted to reach our goals.(1) http://climcor-equipex.dt.insu.cnrs.fr/?lang=en