The distinction between capturing process and describing an experiment

In discussing the development of tools for recording research it is important to make a distinction between capturing the process of research and describing the results of research or recording the plan of an experiment. A large amount of work has been carried to develop tools and standards for describing research after it has been carried out. These include the various MIBBI standards for describing biomedical studies, the FuGE and OBI ontologies as well as a host of specific databases and description formats for more or less specific forms of research output.