Scientific, Synthetic & Simulated Research

Definition

Datasets generated through academic, industrial or government research via experiment, observation, simulation or instrumentation across disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, materials, biology and computing. Includes open-access repositories, laboratory automation data, and synthetic or simulated datasets created to model, test or validate AI systems.

Examples

• Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) 'Synthetic Data for Research' initiative, Western Australian Department of Health Synthetic Data Innovation Project. Australian synthetic healthcare data with Synthea.

Indicators

• Proportion of national research datasets discoverable via ARDC or institutional repositories
• Number of national research infrastructure facilities generating or hosting synthetic/simulated datasets
• Existence of formal policies for synthetic data generation, validation and reuse across research institutions
• Standardised metadata schema
• Federated compliance and scalability (legal and institutional interoperability)
• FAIR compliance (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable)
• CARE compliance (collective benefit, authority to control, responsiblilty and ethics)
• Provenance and lineage tracking
• Consent frameworks
• Onshore hosting and secure processing environments (e.g. SURE)
• Clear licensing
• Longevity and version control
• Domain specific data standards
• Machine readiness formatting

Stocktake

• No existing research surfaced through consultation.