Yearly Archives: 2023

Due to necessary upgrades, MorphoSource will undergo maintenance on July 27 2023 from 12:00 AM – 4:00 EST. We anticipate the site will be unavailable for around an hour within that period.

The MorphoSource team is happy to announce the publication of the MorphoSource Data Vocabulary, a set of terms and controlled vocabularies for describing, contextualizing, and transmitting information about 3D, 2D, and AV media representing objects, both physical objects and digital creations. This data vocabulary describes the metadata terms used by the MorphoSource repository, but it is also intended to represent a general-purpose metadata vocabulary that can be used across a variety of research and data curation use cases where 3D and other object-representing media is used. We are publishing two related sets of terms, one of which describes basic record types and metadata properties for each record type, and a second which describes a collection of controlled vocabularies that are either necessary or useful when describing 3D media. The vocabularies are documented with intuitive human-readable web documentation and are also encoded in machine-readable RDF/OWL ontology files. We will publish some deeper looks at the vocabulary soon, but for now please check the documentation pages for each vocabulary:

• MorphoSource Data Vocabulary (Namespace MS)
• MorphoSource Controlled Vocabularies (Namespace MSCV)

If you have questions or comments about the data vocabulary, please feel free to join the community discussion around this topic in our GitHub Community Discussions.

You can now anonymously share access to private media and private projects by generating temporary links if you have edit access to a media record or are a project manager. By sending the link URL to someone else, they can view the private media or project without logging into MorphoSource or while logged into a MorphoSource account that would otherwise not have access to those records. This is our new recommended solution for granting journal reviewers anonymous access to private media.

For private media, a temporary link will grant access to view the media record and to see and interact with the 3D/2D web preview (if available), but not to download any media files associated with the record. Temporary link users will also not be able to see other private media associated with that specific media, such as private parents or children. For private projects, this link will grant access to view both the project and all media in the project. This is a great way to grant someone temporary access to parent-child derivative groups of multiple private media. Even when accessing private media through a project temporary access link, though, the same restrictions described above apply. Temporary link users are not able to download media files, and will not see any private media not included in the project for which the temporary link has been generated. All temporary links are only valid for a limited period of time, with a default period of 90 days, but you can customize this value when generating a link. If you generated a temporary link, are the data manager for media, or are the manager for a project, you can revoke existing temporary access links, which will immediately stop anyone using the link from being able to access the project or media.

If you are preparing an article or other scholarly manuscript to submit to a peer-reviewed journal or other publication, journal editors may request that you grant reviewers access private media or projects as part of the manuscript submission and review process. Media and project temporary access links allow you to grant anonymous reviewers access to your media and projects as you deem appropriate. Simply generate the appropriate temporary access links, ensure they are valid for long enough for review to be completed, and then send the temporary access links to the journal editor so they can forward them on to appropriate reviewers. Do note that these temporary links will grant reviewers the ability to anonymously access your media or projects, but they will not hide your identity from those reviewers. Anyone using a temporary access link will still be able to see the names and identities of data depositors, managers, and other MorphoSource users associated with media and projects.

For more information, please see our detailed documentation on these features, including our recommendations on providing journal reviewers access to private media:

• Media Temporary Access Links
• Project Temporary Access Links
• Anonymous Reviewer Access to Media

As always, if you have further questions or need assistance with using MorphoSource, feel free to contact us. Thank you for using the MorphoSource 3D Data Repository.

Necessary migration of MorphoSource server hardware will cause the site to be down and inaccessible from 7AM US eastern time Tuesday, February 7th 2023 until 7AM US eastern time Friday February 10th 2023. It is possible that the downtime may be shorter than this, and that the site may come back up sooner. Our team has been preparing for this migration for a long while, and we are confident that it will proceed quickly and easily. Data deposited on MorphoSource is safe and secure, with multiple back-ups and snapshots made on a regular basis, and there is no risk to data as a result of this migration.