Interoperability of Metadata Standards in Cross-Domain Science, Health, and Social Science Applications II

Motivation

Addressing global scientific challenges that depend on cross-discipline integration remains difficult. The challenge is to make cross-discipline data integration a routine aspect of data-driven science. Shared vocabularies and metadata specifications are vital tools enabling integration and semantic linking of data within and between disciplines. Standards tend to get developed and adopted within disciplines or application domains with little consideration of cross-discipline requirements and technologies. The goal of this workshop is to identify a combination of vocabularies and technical specifications that will apply broadly across domain boundaries.

This workshop builds on the outcomes of a first Dagstuhl meeting in October 2018 - Event Number 18403 (details see below, description and report), further exploring how metadata standards can best support interdisciplinary research projects. The 2018 event identified commonalities between several relevant standards, charting a direction for future work. The focus in 2019 will be more technical, looking at detailed aspects of identified approaches, and with specific examples provided in the outputs.

Outcomes will include detailed description of the steps required in dealing with data, i.e. discovery, harmonization, preparation for analyses, publication of data for reuse. An outline of this process view will be supported by more detailed documents covering each phase. Documents will describe current practice and the improvements for data providers and researchers possible through the use of agreed metadata standards. Often several standards or approaches are currently used and/or available. The pros and cons of each standard for each of the stages should be discussed in terms of coverage, acceptance, popularity, software support, and development potential. A set of projects from among those covered in the last workshop will provide concrete case studies.

This work will serve as the basis for a draft set of guidelines for cross-domain projects, to be promoted more widely. Both the specific projects and more generic requirements will be addressed.