An ontology-based description of nano computed tomography measurements in electronic laboratory notebooks

Scientific communities have recognized the importance of well-documented metadata generated during research. However, ensuring that metadata is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) remains a significant challenge. To address this, scientific communities are working towards making metadata available in semantically annotated knowledge graphs using semantic web technologies. In our proposed solution, the creation of a schema is initiated at the very beginning of the scientific process. This is transformed into a data collection platform using the electronic laboratory notebook framework, Herbie, which facilitates the automatic validation and semantic annotation of metadata. Using the example of synchrotron-radiation-based nano-computed-tomography measurements at a beamline, we demonstrate this approach. It effectively captures the complex metadata of such research instruments along with their various configurations, providing a user-friendly experience. We illustrate how Herbie converts all semantic documents into a user interface, ensuring that the entered data automatically meets all FAIR requirements. Additionally, we show how data can be extracted from the knowledge graph using SPARQL queries.