MARS: MIDDLEWARE FOR ASSISTING THE REGISTRATION OF SAMPLES

Middleware for Assisting the Registration of Samples (MARS) is a free and open-source browser and cross-platform desktop application. MARS is an application and service that promotes interdisciplinary collaboration among geologic researchers by providing an interface to SESAR (The System for Earth Sample Registration) for geologists to upload and register metadata from legacy physical samples. MARS automates the bulk registration of legacy samples and the assignment of IGSNs (International Geosample Number) through SESAR. The initial targeted repository is the cores collection of Scripps Institution of Oceanography; however, we are designing MARS as an extensible system that can be adapted to automate the registration of samples from any institution using a constrained data mapping specification. Researchers will be able to read the sample data into MARS and then, by using a custom data mapping file, MARS will register the samples with SESAR and return a unique identifier (IGSN) for each sample. MARS is a project of Working Group 4 of the Internet of Samples (iSamples) NSF-funded Research Coordination Network (RCN), and the software is currently being developed by the Cyber Infrastructure Research and Development Lab for the Earth Sciences (CIRDLES.org) at the College of Charleston. MARS uses the technologies of React-Redux built using the Electron framework developed by Github. The framework allows the software to run in the web browser or on any computer platform, and it also maintains the look and feel of a desktop application with the added functionality of a web browser. MARS is hosted at https://github.com/CIRDLES/MARS. We encourage community collaboration and contributions.