Knowledge Resource

The parts inside the box.

A Knowledge Resource is one piece of material from your application, shared with its own files, its own description and its own identifier. A Knowledge Package is built by putting resources together.

What can be a resource

Almost anything that helps someone understand or rerun your work:

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  Space-based data
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  In-situ data
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  Scripts
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  Tools
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  Workflow
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  Articles and notes
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  User stories
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  Webinars and videos

Common kinds of Knowledge Resource. Data and code sit alongside the documents, workflows and training material that explain them.

Documentation counts as much as data. A dataset nobody can interpret is not reusable, and the note explaining how it was produced is often the part that makes the difference.

Why resources are separate things

You could bundle everything into one big upload. Keeping the parts separate buys you three things:

They can be cited on their own. A resource gets its own DOI, so someone reusing just your dataset can credit it directly.

They are versioned independently. Correcting a script does not force a new version of the dataset next to it.

They can be reused. The same resource can belong to more than one package, the way a standard part fits several kits.

From draft to published

A resource follows the same two states as a package, with one extra step: it can be associated with a package.

      flowchart LR
Create["Create<br/>(files, metadata)"] --> Draft["Knowledge Resource<br/>(Draft)<br/>edit freely"]
Draft -->|Publish| Published["Knowledge Resource<br/>(Published)"]
Published -.->|New version| Draft
Draft -->|Associate| Managed["Associated with<br/>a Knowledge Package"]
Managed -->|Published with the Package| Published
    

Click to expand

A resource can be published on its own. Once it is associated with a Knowledge Package, it is published together with that package instead.

Draft is private to you, and you can change its metadata and files freely, or delete it.

Published is public and its files are frozen. Metadata stays editable, and changing the files means creating a new version.

An associated resource waits for its package

Once you associate a resource with a package, you no longer publish it by itself. It goes public when the package does. This is what keeps a package complete: its parts cannot go missing or appear out of step with it.