GO BUILD Workshop on “Semantic Interoperability of Metadata for Cross-Domain Research of the Future” – How do we make vocabularies and other semantic resources FAIR?
The latest workshop offered by the GO FAIR International Support and Coordination Office (GFISCO) brought together representatives of the implementation networks (INs) as well as non-members of GO FAIR with an interest in semantic aspects of interoperability of metadata who were looking for an opportunity to exchange with like-minded colleagues.
The workshop took place on November 11, 2019 at the ZBW – Leibniz Information Centre for Economics in Hamburg with the goal to establish cross-IN cooperation and working groups who will be working in the context of the GO FAIR initiative on the FAIRification of semantic artefacts like thesauri, controlled vocabularies and ontologies.
The participants were welcomed by Catharina Wasner (GFISCO, Hamburg) who stressed in her presentation the need for cooperation and agreed on rules to achieve semantic interoperability of metadata. Following that, four INs presented their challenges and problems with semantic interoperability as well as their ideas, methods and solutions to solve them:
- GO INTER – Peter Mutschke (GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences);
- GeRDI – Atif Latif / Fidan Limani (ZBW Leibniz Information Centre for Economics);
- Personal Health Train – Oya Beyan (Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technology FIT);
- Food Systems – Ben Schaap (GODAN / Wageningen University and Research)
These perspectives of the INs were followed by four ignition talks that gave further insight on possible approaches and solutions for semantic interoperability:
- Joachim Wackerow (GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences) talked about the results of a CODATA/DDI workshop series on “Interoperability of Metadata Standards in Cross-Domain Science, Health, and Social Science Applications”;
- Erik Schultes (GFISCO, Leiden) presented the FAIR Convergence Matrix as an instrument to achieve convergence of FAIRness including FAIR semantics in research communities;
- Claus-Peter Klas (GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences) introduced the CESSDA Vocabulary Service as an example for many tools that support FAIRification processes of semantic artefacts;
- Pier Luigi Buttigieg (Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research, Alfred Wegener Institute) discussed the approaches of the RDA working group on “Interoperable Descriptions of Observable Property Terminology” (I-ADOPT WG).
In the working group session in the afternoon four working groups were established to discuss the following questions:
- How can we make our semantic artefacts FAIR?
- How can tools and software support the FAIRification of semantic resources?
- Which guidelines and policies are needed to achieve semantic interoperability of metadata?
Learn more about the results of these discussions in this summary (link to pdf-document).
