Glossary

Access level

What one collaborator may do with one resource. Can view and Can edit are the two levels, set per person or per organization on the resource's Collaborators tab. See Collaborators & access levels.

API key

A secret personal credential for scripts that call the REST API through the x-api-key header. It acts as the user who created it, is shown once, and can be expired or revoked. It is different from the internal x-api-key-id plus HMAC headers used by trusted service webhooks.

Ambyte

The MQTT gateway and ingestion family for autonomous sensors. Its enum/API value is ambyte. Ambyte ingestion and IoT registration exist; mobile local connection and device monitoring are not the current workflow. Web protocol testing can run the ambyte family through the generic device driver over BLE or USB/serial as a compatibility path; a dedicated Ambyte BLE integration is planned, not built. Legacy ambyte rows are not provenance-clean: migration 0037 remapped existing ambit rows to ambyte before migration 0038 re-added ambit, so some stored ambyte data was captured by an Ambit. openJII records this and does not rewrite historical rows.

Ambit

A leaf measurement device in the ambit family, distinct from the Ambyte gateway. The web workbook host can identify it over USB serial and send direct command cells for calibration or spot readings. Full Ambit measurements run through its Ambyte gateway rather than a direct protocol cell.

Bronze, Silver, Gold

Responsibilities in the medallion data pipeline. Bronze keeps source records close to ingestion, Silver validates and standardizes them, and Gold presents analysis-oriented tables or aggregates. They are pipeline terms, not researcher access levels.

Can edit

The higher access level. Everything Can view allows, plus the resource's settings, publishing, archiving, and managing who else has access.

Can view

The lower access level. On an experiment it carries contribution as well as reading: measurements, annotations and comments. Public visibility does not — a stranger on a public experiment can read it and nothing more.

Dashboard

A saved experiment layout that can combine visualizations, tables, filters, and explanatory content for repeated viewing.

Data table / dataset

A named, processed collection of experiment rows displayed as a tab in Data. Exports are created for one table at a time.

Device

In researcher-facing copy, handheld hardware requiring regular human operation, such as a MultispeQ. Some technical interfaces use “device” more broadly for registered IoT hardware.

Directory

The listing of public organizations that anyone can browse and ask to join. Private organizations are not listed, and personal workspaces never are.

Embargo

A temporary period during which an experiment remains private. The end date must be no more than 365 days away; an automated daily job publishes expired embargoes.

Experiment

The main research container for collaborators, locations, metadata, a pinned workbook version, measurement data, visualizations, dashboards, and access settings. The create form has no species field; species belongs in metadata.

FAIR

Principles for making digital research outputs Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. FAIR does not mean that every dataset must be fully open, and public visibility alone does not establish FAIR compliance.

Join request

An ask to be added to a public organization, with an optional message. An Owner or Admin approves or rejects it; approval adds the person as a Member.

Macro

Code used by a workbook to transform or analyze a protocol result. In the mobile flow, macro output is reviewed with each device's measurement before acceptance.

Measurement

One timestamped result associated with an experiment and protocol, optionally including question answers, annotations, macro output, device identity, latitude and longitude, and a multi-device workbook-run ID.

Metadata

Structured context that explains how to interpret measurements: subject or sample identity, species, genotype, treatment, location, conditions, units, and other non-measurement variables relevant to the study.

Move

Changing which workspace owns a resource — from your personal workspace into an organization, or between organizations. Devices cannot be moved.

MultispeQ

Handheld hardware used for protocol-guided optical measurements. The mobile app connects over Bluetooth or USB; multi-device mobile work uses wired USB.

Organization

A shared workspace owned collectively by a lab, group or project. It owns resources, has Owners, Admins and Members, and can contain teams. Distinct from your personal workspace, which is yours alone.

Outside Collaborator

A label on a collaborator row marking a person or organization from outside the organization that owns the resource. It is information only; what they can do comes from their access level.

Passkey

A phishing-resistant sign-in credential protected by a device screen lock, password manager, or hardware security key. A passkey is an additional way to sign in to an existing account; removing one does not end browser sessions or remove other sign-in methods.

Personal workspace

The workspace every account gets, which owns anything you create outside an organization. Nobody else can be added to it, and it cannot be shared or deleted.

Protocol

A machine-readable measurement recipe for one sensor family. It contains device steps and parameters. If you need to change someone else's protocol, fork it into an editable copy instead of overwriting the original.

Provenance

The record of where data came from and what happened to it: experiment, device, contributor, protocol, workbook version, timestamp, source system, transformations, annotations, and export or migration context.

Sensor

In researcher-facing copy, autonomous hardware that records observations over time with little interaction after setup. In technical UI, sensor family is also the legacy shared enum for MultispeQ, Ambyte, Ambit, MiniPAR, and generic hardware; that technical field name does not make the Ambyte gateway a sensor.

Team

A named subgroup of one organization's members, used to share with a group in one step. Teams are flat, and deleting one withdraws every share it held.

Visibility

Whether an experiment is public or private under embargo. New experiments default to public, and the interface treats a move to public as irreversible.

Visualization

A saved chart configuration linked to an experiment dataset. Visualizations can be viewed on their own or placed on dashboards.

Workbook

The versioned data-collection design used by an experiment. Cells can contain instructions, questions, protocols, device commands, macros, branches, markdown, and outputs. An experiment pins a published workbook version so later draft edits do not silently change its field flow.