The first domain is the private research domain. This is where the immediate
research team is working with its data and producing its results. The team may use a
Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) or other research management
system (or even something as lightweight as an Excel spreadsheet) to keep track of
its data files. The files themselves will live in a research data store. This might be as
simple as a file system or something more sophisticated like Fedora or a Storage
Resource Broker (SRB) instance. In terms of the data continua, this domain is
characterised by having less metadata, more items, larger objects that are often
continually updated, researcher management of the items, less preservation, mostly
closed access and less exposure.