Mission and objectives
Among all components of Open Science, the sharing of research resources, such as large-scale data, compute, network, software, algorithms and others across domains and regions ignite more possibilities for scientific discovery but come with considerable additional costs. Cloud services provide an elastic and scalable resource scheduling mechanism to feed the needs of resources sharing across domains but still faces challenges, such as interoperability and others. The OSCs Xi metadata TG aims to overcome these barriers by developing a unified metadata framework designed for Open Science Cloud services. By leveraging the approach of Everything-as-a-service model (XAAS) for Open Science Cloud, it ensures consistent and clear descriptions of various levels of services, types, granularities, attributes of resources and models of service delivery in scenarios.
Significance
We expect the TG deliverables to serve as a cutting-edge portrait of Open Science Infrastructures, addressing the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science. Additionally, they will showcase CODATA’s efforts in promoting Open Science and open data by providing practical solutions to bridge the gaps in managing federated, accessible, interoperable, interconnected, and inclusive research e-infrastructures that support both scientific and societal progress.
Impact
The standardized metadata developed by the TG will be applicable across various research infrastructure platforms. They will support unified metadata for data-model interaction, end-to-end cloud service management, and large-scale, cross-regional, and cross-domain collaborative sharing. These standards will also be implemented within the Global Open Science Cloud (GOSC) initiative, which aims to achieve interconnectivity and interoperability among various open science platforms and initiatives worldwide.
Planned (and later on actual) activities and outputs for 2025-2027
- A final report drafting a human understandable and machine-readable Xi metadata schema v1.0;
- Pilot examples of adoption and call for a broadened scope of implementation in regions and domains.
- 1-2 research articles submitted to the CODATA Data Science Journal and other publishing platforms, open repositories.
- Annual workshops and seminars that integrate the dialogues and insights delivered for capacity building, supported by the TG and news pieces and blogs co-branded by CODATA highlight the ongoing progress and possible deliverables, as well as an expanded community network for FAIR adoption.
Contacts
Co-chairs: Dr. Lili Zhang (GOSC IPO, CNIC, CAS), Prof. Eva Méndez (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid), Dr. Yin Chen (EGI)
The TG Secretary: Ms. FENG Runjin (GOSC IPO/ Beihang University)
Page last updated: 2025-12-18