We were delighted to welcome sixty-two highly engaged participants to our hybrid workshop, ‘The WorldFAIR Project’s cross-domain interoperability framework’ in Göteborg on 20 March 2023. Our goal was to describe the reasoning behind the development of the Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework (CDIF), to give a detailed picture of how it is currently envisioned and what activities, functions, and standards it will encompass, and to provide a current status of the work.
The EC-funded WorldFAIR project is coordinated by CODATA, with RDA as a major partner, and will produce an initial draft of the CDIF recommendations. Building on WorldFAIR, and other expert communities, a Working Group and Advisory Group have been established to oversee the development of CDIF. It is expected that CDIF will persist beyond
the scope of the initial WorldFAIR Project, and include not only the eleven domain case studies, but also other interested communities. Efforts will be made to align with major global initiatives and infrastructures addressing data interoperability (such as EOSC, ARDC, UNECE Modern Statistics).
The first part of the workshop focused on the functional drivers and requirements for defininga set of activities to support the FAIR principles, and showed the organisational and system dynamics which make CDIF necessary. The development process and questions around the organisation of the work were also described. The draft of CDIF that was presented identifies activities and information implicit in adherence to and support for the FAIR principles. CDIF is built on top of the generic foundation provided by the FAIR Digital Object Framework, to address interoperability at the level of applications rather than exchange protocols. CDIF reflects the granular needs for domain metadata being expressed in broadly understood terms where possible, supplemented by domain-specific semantics where absolutely required.
The second part of the workshop showed how these research and data requirements can be translated into system functions and services, and how these can be supported through the use of existing standards and specifications for the needed information. These include specifications such as DCAT, Schema.org, DDI-CDI, SKOS/XKOS, SSSOM, OGC Observations & Measurements/I-PROV, etc. Specific features of the standards and how they can be used in combination were addressed, although not at a technical level. Feedback from participants was elicited, and their input collected helps inform the ongoing development work.
The slides are available in Zenodo here and the recording is available here.
Presentation: WorldFAIR context, progress, FIPs and CDIF, presentation, Simon Hodson
Presentation: Vision for CDIF and its role as a cross-domain lingua franca, presentation, Arofan Gregory
Presentation: Functional breakdown and high level recommendations in CDIF, current status and planned work, presentation, Arofan Gregory
Presentation: WorldFAIR Vision Paper ‘Arise FAIR Sun’, Simon Hodson
Pre-event Reading:
Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework (CDIF) Working Documents
WorldFAIR CDIF Vision Paper: Arise FAIR Sun, draft for comment
Many thanks to all WorldFAIR colleagues who contributed to make this event a success!