What is a SKMS, or scientific knowledge management system?

It’s a software solution that goes beyond a simple Scientific Data Management System (or SDMS). A SKMS, or Scientific Knowledge Management System can transform all of your digital data into knowledge.

A SKMS improves a company’s productivity and competitiveness:

• It centralizes all data so it is accessible to your employees. This means you no longer lose data, and you significantly prolong its life cycle because existing data can be reused.
• It automatically collects and synchronizes files from any data source: user’s workstations, analytic software, ELN, LIMS etc., in order to make data available easily to scientists.
• Guides the user to annotate files sent to the database in order to standardize data entry and make data accessible to all.
• It allows the alignment of data from multiple sources using business criteria, which reveals correlations that were not previously visible.
• Provided with an agile Search Engine, it allows users to quickly and easily access data related to a thematic or a specific request.
• It adapts to all types of structures and activities, enabling the collection, browsing, storage and sharing of data across an organization. With this system, you can organize data so that each piece of information is easily accessible, and even push data to relevant users within the company.

INQUIRO IS A SKMS WHICH CONCEPT IS BASED ON METADATA.

Your company’s data is a hidden treasure trove waiting to be discovered and put to use. For this to happen, you need metadata.

In the industry’s ever-changing world, the quantities of data collected grow larger every day. It is becoming essential to possess information, as well as to harness it.

When managers are asked, they are quite clear about their primary objectives:

• Speed up the company’s growth
• Attract and retain new customers
• Reduce production costs

Metadata is rarely identified as a tool to achieve these key objectives. Yet metadata is the cement that lets you build the foundations of an effective knowledge management strategy.

Metadata refers to information that describes data, or « data about data ». This additional information makes it possible to understand the nature, meaning, origin and utilization of a piece of information.

The only way to guarantee efficient integration among the different systems and divisions is to ensure that all data is centralized, identified and maintained. Now metadata makes this possible!

Although the concept of metadata is not new, thanks to technological advances today it can be used for more than simply cataloging information. Our approach propels metadata from the status of descriptive and accessory data about the nature of the information it is associated with, to the status of meaningful and integrated data that makes it possible to structure and enhance information.

Thanks to metadata such as author, keywords, topics, date, method that generates the data etc… Inquiro’s Search Engine can easily find any information in the database.

Learn more about Scientific Knowledge Management, contact one of our experts here.