Category Archives: Community participation

WorldFAIR-related sessions at International Data Week 2023

The WorldFAIR project has had a number of sessions accepted for International Data Week 2023, an event which incorporates the Research Data Alliance 21st Plenary Meeting, the SciDataCon conference, and some IDW shared plenary sessions.

Here is an initial overview including SciDataCon sessions, IDW plenary sessions, and RDA Interest Group / Working Group / ’Birds of a Feather’ meetings.

If your session is not here, please add it to the relevant day, in this document, or leave a comment on this blogpost with the details.

If you’re attending, double check the programme in advance to confirm the date/time/location, as details may change.

Mon 23 Oct

  • Building a semantic interoperability framework: towards FAIR mappings and crosswalks. Session Organisers: Joonas Kesäniemi , Tommi Suominen , Yann Le Franc , Wolmar Nyberg Åkerström. Mozart Hall 4+5. 09:30 – 11:00 UTC / 11:30-13:00 CEST. https://www.scidatacon.org/IDW-2023-Salzburg/sessions/512/

 

  • RDA BoF meeting: Why aren’t we talking about Collections as Data? BoF chair serving as contact person: Beth Knazook (WP13). Mon Oct 23, 2023. https://www.rd-alliance.org/why-arent-we-talking-about-collections-data

 

  • Session Title: Data Frontiers in Social Sciences: Ethics, Integration, and Best Practices. Session Organisers: Maja Dolinar. Room: Doppler Hall. Date: Oct. 23, 2023. https://www.scidatacon.org/IDW-2023-Salzburg/sessions/573/ . Speakers include Steve McEachern (WP06).

 

  • FAIR Beyond Discoverability: Exploring Technology Approaches and Challenges through DDI-CDI Implementation. Session Organisers: Arofan Gregory and Simon Hodson. Karajan-Hall 2+3. Date: Oct. 23. 14:00 – 15:30 UTC / 16:00 – 17:30 CEST. https://www.scidatacon.org/IDW-2023-Salzburg/sessions/553/

Tue 24 Oct

  • IDW Plenary Session ‘Inclusivity in Open Science while advancing research assessment and career pathway impact’. Speakers include Ana Ortigoza (WP08). Tue Oct 24, 2023. https://idw2023.events.whova.com/Agenda/3380195

 

  • Session Title: WorldFAIR: the Cross Domain Interoperability Framework (CDIF). Session Organisers: Simon Hodson, Laura Molloy, Arofan Gregory (WP02). Room: Europa Hall. Date: Oct. 24, 2023. https://www.scidatacon.org/IDW-2023-Salzburg/sessions/555/ 12:00 – 13:30 UTC / 14:00 – 15:30 CEST

 

  • Session Title: Open data and open service for disaster risk reduction. Session Organisers: Qunli Han , Fang Lian , Lili Zhang , Jianhui Li. https://www.scidatacon.org/IDW-2023-Salzburg/sessions/509/. Room: Karajan-Hall 1. Date: Oct. 24, 2023. Speakers include Bapon Fakhruddin (WP12).

Wed 25 Oct

  • Session Title: Data Cubes as a tool to organise data in data spaces. Session Organisers: Quentin Groom , Kathi Schleidt , Maarten Trekels (WP10). Date: Oct. 25, 2023. https://www.scidatacon.org/IDW-2023-Salzburg/sessions/490/

 

  • Let’s talk about FAIR mappings! Towards common practices for sharing mappings and crosswalks, RDA BoF, Organiser: Yann Le Franc. Mozart Hall 4+5. 09:30 – 11:00 UTC / 11:30 – 13:00 CEST https://www.rd-alliance.org/let%E2%80%99s-talk-about-fair-mappings-towards-common-practices-sharing-mappings-and-crosswalks

 

  • IDW 2023 Plenary Session ‘Data and global challenges: data, science, trust and policy’. Date: Oct. 25, 2023.Room: Europa Hall. Speakers include Pier Luigi Buttigieg (WP11).

 

  • WorldFAIR will be showcased in the CODATA-WDS plenary session on the evening of Wed 25 Oct. Room: Europa Hall.

Thu 26 Oct

  • Session Title: Beyond FAIR: Reusing Chemical Data Across-disciplines with CARE, TRUST, and Openness. Session Organisers: Fatima Mustafa , Iseult Lynch , Thomas Exner , Lesley Wyborn , Ian Bruno , Leah McEwen , Anjana Elapavalore , Hiba Mohammed-Taha , Alexander Prent. Thursday, 26 Oct. Room: Karajan-Hall 2+3. https://www.scidatacon.org/IDW-2023-Salzburg/sessions/504/

 

  • RDA BoF meeting: Describing Chemical, Physical and Biological samples digitally: Seeking harmonisation. Thursday, 26 Oct. Room: Mozart Hall 2+3. https://www.rd-alliance.org/describing-chemical-physical-and-biological-samples-digitally-seeking-harmonisation

Happy International Data Week 2023, whether you are attending in person or online!

Two more #terms4FAIRskills hackathons to start the new year!

The Terms4FAIRskills project continued its engagement with the wider community with two more hack sessions on the 27th and 29th January 2021.  Building on the work of the the last two hack sessions in December 2020, the project core team – Yann Le Franc, Pete McQuilton and Laura Molloy – once again welcomed colleagues from the FAIRsFAIR project, FAIRsharing, ELIXIR, EOSC-Life, the Digital Curation Centre, DANS, CINES and CODATA to find out more about the Semaphora annotation plugin, derived from the EOSC semantic annotation service, B2NOTE, and how it works with a revised version of the Terms4FAIRskills terminology to describe online training resources.

Once installation was successfully completed, participants were enthusiastic about the ease with which they were able to choose from existing terms and suggest their own terms to annotate their training materials with their own choice of FAIR-related skills and competences.  Participants were also pleased to be able to search annotations on the Semaphora plugin, making it easier to find appropriate training materials for their needs. As always, the core team learned a lot from the lively discussion throughout the sessions, and we are once again working with the feedback from participants to improve both the terminology and the annotation tool.

Dr Angus Whyte, Senior Institutional Support Officer, reflected: “This felt like a very useful session to me. Having the Semaphora tool made quite a difference. It was quite helpful that it hides the hierarchical structure in the terminology, as we know that is a work-in-progress. The value of the work that has gone into distilling the terms was pretty clear, as was the ease of using the tool. A bit of practice with the annotation helped too. It takes a bit of discipline to be economical with the choice of terms to tag an item with. And we had an interesting and useful discussion about the level of granularity at which the annotation is most helpful.”

Prof Hugh Shanahan, Professor of Open Science at Royal Holloway, University of London, agreed: “The sessions were enormously helpful in understanding what’s been achieved because of the EOSC [co-creation] funding. The project has reached a significant level of maturity and it’s much clearer now what the finished project will look like as a tool for annotating and finding FAIR related training materials.”

We are currently planning a final remote sprint to complete this phase of activity for which we are grateful to have received funds from the EOSC Co-creation award.

For further information about the terminology, please see the terms4FAIRskills website, follow the #terms4FAIRskills hashtag on Twitter and/or email terms4FAIRskills@codata.org.

#terms4FAIRskills hackathons – December 2020

By Laura Molloy and Peter McQuilton

The terms4FAIRskills core team was delighted to welcome a group of keen annotators from across Europe to join in a hackathon on 11th and 15th December 2020.  Participants from FAIRsFAIR, FAIRsharing, ELIXIR, EOSC-Pillar, the Digital Curation Centre, DANS, CINES and CODATA worked actively with a range of training materials of their choice, and experimented with annotating these materials with terms from the current version of the terms4FAIRskills terminology.

The terms4FAIRskills project aims to create a formalised terminology that describes the competencies, skills and knowledge associated with making and keeping data FAIR.  When mature, this terminology will apply to a variety of use cases, including:

  • To assist with the creation and assessment of data stewardship curricula;
  • To facilitate the annotation, discovery and evaluation of FAIR-enabling materials (e.g. training) and resources;
  • To enable the formalisation of job descriptions and CVs/résumés with recognised, structured competencies.

The completed terminology will be of use to trainers who teach FAIR data skills, researchers who wish to identify skill gaps in their teams, and managers who need to recruit individuals to relevant roles.

Started as a volunteer, bottom-up effort, #terms4FAIRskills has recently received an EOSC co-creation grant to enable collaborative development of the terminology via a core team of ontology experts alongside a coordinating group. The grant also funds a series of hackathons to bring together representatives from the community of prospective users.

In the first virtual hackathon, with lively discussion throughout, we iteratively refined the terminology through the practical annotation of training materials from ELIXIR TeSS and the RDA/CODATA Summer Schools.  Thanks to this feedback, the core team will continue to review the terminology, add synonyms, refine the hierarchy and adapt the current model.

We will run a follow-on hackathon in early 2021, where we will once again test the model through practical annotation of real world training material.

For further information about the terminology, please see the terms4FAIRskills website, follow the #terms4FAIRskills hashtag on Twitter and/or email terms4FAIRskills@codata.org.

Core team

  • Peter McQuilton, FAIRsharing and University of Oxford
  • Yann Le Franc, e-Science Data Factory
  • Laura Molloy, CODATA
  • Allyson Lister, FAIRsharing and University of Oxford

December 2020 virtual hackathon attendees

  • Hugh Shanahan, RDA/CODATA Summer Schools
  • Celia van Gelder, ELIXIR / DTL
  • Victoria Dominguez del Angel, ELIXIR / INRA
  • Angus Whyte, FAIRsFAIR / DCC
  • Marjan Grootveld, FAIRsFAIR / DANS
  • Marie-Anne Maurel, FAIRsFAIR / CINES
  • Samuel Viscapi, FAIRsFAIR / CINES

Coordination group

  • Celia van Gelder (DTL/ELIXIR-NL, NL)
  • Simon Hodson (CODATA, FR)
  • Yann Le Franc (e-Science Data Factory, FR)
  • Peter McQuilton (FAIRsharing and University of Oxford, UK)
  • Susanna-Assunta Sansone (FAIRsharing and University of Oxford, UK)
  • Hugh Shanahan (Royal Holloway, UK)
  • Angus Whyte (DCC, UK)
  • Laura Molloy (CODATA, FR)
 

Digital Preservation Awards 2020

Digital Preservation Awards season is upon us!  Celebrating excellence in maintaining our digital legacy, the Digital Preservation Awards take place every two years and I’m delighted to be one of this year’s judges[1].

Digital preservation is a compelling research area as well as the technological bedrock of data infrastructure, and as such the resources and community of the Digital Preservation Coalition are invaluable resources for my work here at CODATA.

How does digital preservation connect to research data?  Preservation, including appraisal, selection and storage decision-making, is fundamental in any effort towards making and keeping digital research data findable, comprehensible and reusable.

Judging is a fantastic way to get better informed on the global digital preservation community – it’s a chance to wade through a large stack of interesting, innovative and sometimes surprising ideas showing the range and diversity of recent activity in digital preservation. Projects include technical development, community building and skills development activities, all of which are necessary for digital preservation to happen. Each nominated project must be formally supported by a senior colleague – a useful way to ensure that each organisation is aware of the innovative work being developed by their staff.

How do we handle such a range of different types of work? Nominations are sorted into six broad categories, with a prize going to the winner of each category. This year, categories are:
– Communication and Collaboration
– Research and Innovation
– Teaching and Communication
– Commerce, Industry and The Third Sector
– Best Student Work
– Safeguarding the Digital Legacy

Each category is assessed on ten separate criteria and we are looking for things like usability, community engagement, value for money, transparency and ethical design, plus that elusive sparkle and verve in the projects that we review. The shortlist we have decided upon will soon be open to voting by DPC members. Our next step will then be to interview finalists and delve deeper into each project. The winner of each category will be announced on World Digital Preservation Day[2], 5th of November 2020.

To find out more about the work of the Digital Preservation Coalition – and the Digital Preservation Awards – please visit https://www.dpconline.org, or follow @dpc_chat on Twitter.

Laura Molloy
CODATA Senior Research Lead
Tw: @LM_HATII

[1] https://www.dpconline.org/events/digital-preservation-awards/judges
[2] https://www.dpconline.org/events/world-digital-preservation-day