Data Description

Research collections are an important tool for understanding the Earth, its systems, and human interaction. Despite the importance of collections, many are not maintained or curated as thoroughly as they should. Part of the reason for this is the lack of professional reward for curation, maintenance, or collection. To address this gap in attribution metadata, this Working Group recommends the use of PROV entities and properties to link people (Agent), the curatorial actions they perform (Activity), and the digital or physical objects they are curating (Entity). Assigning a Role to an Agent is optional. These recommendations are discussed in the context of the RDA and existing standards. A separate technical document gives specific examples of three use cases as RDF Turtle representations and diagrams.

The goal of the RDA Research Data Repository Interoperability WG (RDRIWG) was to achieve consensus on an adoptable approach to facilitating research data repository interoperability for a defined set of initial use cases. The following document presents final recommendations the members of the RDRIWG have agreed on. It describes a general exchange format based on the well-known BagIt specification complemented with BagIt Profiles, another specification defining how to describe the internal structure of BagIt-based packages. In order to achieve a basic level of interoperability with regard to the content of such exchange packages, the WG members have agreed on recommending to include DataCite metadata in each package. The presented recommendations document describes the exchange format itself together with adoption guidelines and information about related efforts. In addition, early adoptions are publicly available at GitHub and referenced within the document.

This is the first deliverable of the RDRIWG, the Research Data Repository Interoperability Primer. It presents the targeted use cases as well as an overview of standards, technologies and tools this WG has expertise in and which are potentially a part of the proposed consensus. The main focus of the document is on machine operable interfaces, but it also contains a comprehensible collection of data and metadata formats and models focusing on the exchange of digital content in a generic way. Finally, a selection of custom tools is presented, which might not be adopted, but can support decisions through the experience gained while developing and using them. The present document will serve as a basis for discussions towards a consensus to be accepted by a majority of WG members and platform developers in order to achieve a broad adoption of the WGs' outcome and to make progress toward research data repository interoperability.