status: Recognised & Endorsed

Chair (s): Mingfang Wu, Sarala Wimalaratne, Adam Shepherd, Leyla Jael Castro

Group Email: [group_email]

Secretariat Liaison: Stefanie Kethers


Introduction:

 

The wide use of schema.org to add structured metadata in web pages for use by  commercial search engines has attracted the attention of the data management community as a possible mechanism to leverage the robust commercial search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing etc. to facilitate discovery and access to scientific data. Various projects have been exploring this approach, including the US NSF EarthCube p418 projectGoogle's Dataset Recommendations, BioSchemas, Force11 DCIP, Research Data AustraliaDataCiteHarvard Dataverse,  NASA’s Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) Infrastructure, EOSCpilot,  etc.  Since schema.org has largely been driven by commercial business use cases, and a loosely governed process for adding and defining resource type, property and vocabulary for research domain, there are gaps and deficiencies  that make its application for research data problematic.

 

 

Since P11, the RDA Data Discovery Paradigms IG started the task force "Using schema.org for research data discovery". The group has organised sessions at RDA plenaries and online calls to discuss how we research community come together to embrace the advantages of discovering data via web search engines, meanwhile to address gaps and deficiencies. There is a proposal to form a RDA Working Group with a focused scope and set of well-defined priorities/objectives.

 

The objectives of this work group are twofold:

  1. to identify and bridge gaps in existing schemas commonly used for research data, by bringing together communities who are working with such vocabularies to document research data and related resources;
     
  2. to provide guidelines for those communities whose needs are not addressed by existing metadata schema such as schema.org, and provide guidelines on proposing extensions.

To align with the above objectives, we instrumented a survey on current practices in using schemas to describe research datasets. The survey is still open, your participation is more than welcome. (The survey was developed by the DDP IG TF, which led to the formation of this WG.)

 

The planned outputs will include:

  1. A generic ‘conceptual data model’ with essential types and properties for research data discovery over the web. The model will be built on bioschemas.org, science-on-schema.org, schema.org, DCAT, DDI-DISCO and SSN schemas from some representative research domains, and data discovery use cases. A research domain can map their schema to the conceptual model when they publish data to the web or exchange metadata between data portals/repositories.
     

  2. A guideline, illustrated with common patterns, of common patterns for publishing metadata landing pages with structured data markups; and a guideline of how to customise the research schemas for target domains with examples. 
     

  3. Toolings for making the implementation easier if resources are available. This could include collecting and cataloguing tools that generate, validate and parse schema.org & DCAT markup, etc.

Living documents:

Research Metadata Schemas WG (This is the directory for all documents prepared by this WG, including meeting notes.)

In particular, the following three documents are for the WG outputs:

  • Crosswalks (As dated on 15 May 2020, there are 12 crosswalks from 12 schemas to schema.org.)
  • Best practice guides
  • Tooling (collecting tools for supporting the structured data publishing process, e.g. tools that generate, validate, crawling  search structured data)

Members are more than welcome to contribute to the above three ongoing documents.  This output folder  has all working in progress documents for the outputs.

 

The WG's Wiki Index

 

Meeting schedule:

The group meeting in 2022 (and onward) is on third Wednesday in even months. A meeting reminder will be sent to the group about 2 days before each meeting.

If you are unable to join, you can still add your thoughts to this document with rolling agendas and notes.

 

 

Posts

03
May
2023

A Decade of Data: Learning resources minimal metadata application profile; Wednesday 17 May 2023

by Katarzyna Biernacka

Dear all, ‘*Learning resources minimal metadata application profile*’: online, Wednesday 17 May 2023 at 15:00-16:00 UTC. Registration is now open!
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02
May
2023

IASSIST'23 = Diversity in Research: Social Justice from Data

by Paula Lackie

FYI: IASSIST is a wonderful community of helpful data professionals from around the world. 
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02
May
2023

IASSIST'23 = Diversity in Research: Social Justice from Data

by Paula Lackie

FYI: IASSIST is a wonderful community of helpful data professionals from around the world. 
0 | Add new comment
02
May
2023

IASSIST'23 = Diversity in Research: Social Justice from Data

by Paula Lackie

FYI: IASSIST is a wonderful community of helpful data professionals from around the world. 
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17
April
2023

Reminder: Final group call this Wednesday (19th, 8pm UTC) to wrap up the Research Metadata Schemas WG

by Mingfang Wu

Dear All,   A reminder that we have a scheduled meeting on 19th April 8PM UTC (you can check your local time here).   We would like to take this opportunity to thank you and to wrap up this WG.   The WG started in 2019, and completed its work in 2021. Our outputs include:
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14
March
2023

Second Call for papers - DaMaLOS 2023 co-located with ESWC

by Leyla Jael Castro

Dear all IG and WG at RDA Apologies for cross-posting. Please find below the Call for Papers for the 3rd Workshop on Metadata and Research (objects) Management for Linked Open Science - DaMaLOS 2023 , this year co-located with the Extended Semantic Web Conference ESCW 2023. Drop me a line if you have any questions. Kind regards, On behalf of the organizing committee ---- *DaMaLOS 2023 CfPESWC 2023. Hersonissos, Greece, May 29, 2023Conference
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14
March
2023

Meet during P20 to discuss data interoperability?

by Gavin Chait

Dear Research Metadata Schemas group, I'm Gavin Chait, and I'm involved in a data interoperability project funded via EOSC Futures (https://eoscfuture-grants.eu/meet-the-grantees/implementation-no-code-metho d-schema-schema-data-transformations-interoperability, and https://whyqd.com). I will be participating in the RDA plenary event in Gothenburg and would like to discuss issues around data interoperability,
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18
January
2023

Reminder: RDA Research Metadata Schemas WG meeting on 18 January, 20:00 UTC

by Mingfang Wu

Greetings All, Our next group call is this Wednesday, 20:00 UTC (your local time here ). Agenda and minutes from previous meetings are available here . Please feel free to table an agenda item to the linked minutes document. Zoom link for the meeting: *https://monash.zoom.us/j/86343950822?pwd=YVo0MkcxTnY0d3JrdjFZVFVqeEZ5Zz09
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16
January
2023

Call for papers - DaMaLOS 2023 co-located with ESWC

by Leyla Jael Castro

Dear all IG and WG at RDA Apologies for cross-posting. Please find below the Call for Papers for the 3rd Workshop on Metadata and Research (objects) Management for Linked Open Science - DaMaLOS 2023 , this year co-located with the Extended Semantic Web Conference ESCW 2023. Drop me a line if you have any questions. Kind regards, on behalf of DaMaLOS Organizing Committee *DaMaLOS 2023 CfPDaMaLOS-2023: 3rd Workshop on Metadata and Research (objects) Management for Linked Open ScienceESWC 2023Hersonissos, Greece,
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01
November
2022

Invitation to participate in 'A Decade of Data: 10 Years of the RDA' events and activities

by Connie Clare

Good day, The RDA Secretariat would like to invite the Research Metadata Schemas WG to participate in ‘A Decade of Data’: Celebrating 10 Years of the Research Data Alliance’. 10 months to celebrate 10 years of the RDA
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