New Paradigms for Data Discovery Interest Group Charter

RDA Interest Group Charter

Name of Proposed Interest Group:  New Paradigms for Data Discovery

Introduction:

An emerging statement on research data is that it should be FAIR: “Findable, Accessible, Interpretable and Reusable”. To comply with the first of these criteria, being Findable, we need a data infrastructure that supports users in discovering research data regardless of its location or the manner in which it is stored, described and exposed. This is a significant and growing challenge, as the number of research data repositories, and the need for cross-disciplinary data discovery, increases. This interest group aims to explore common elements and shared issues that those who search for data, and who build systems that enable data search, share.

User scenarios or use cases the IG wishes to address:

1. Data search engines are interested in developing components and practices to connect resources and results
2. Data repositories are interested in improving and expanding search on their platforms
3. Users are interested in better interfaces and fewer places to look for data
4. Data creators are interested in a shared set of data metrics for all search engines
5. Data search builders are interested in sharing knowledge and tools about ranking, relevance and content enrichment.  

Objectives:

The objectives are to provide a forum where representatives from across the spectrum of stakeholders and roles pertaining to data search can discuss issues related to improving data discovery. The goal is to identify concrete deliverables such as a registry of data search engines, common test datasets, usage metrics, and a collection of data search use cases and competency questions.

Related Activities:

• NASA’s WG on Search Relevancy – focus is on improving search result relevance for EOSDIS data
• ESIP’s Information Quality Cluster and NASA’s WG on Data Quality are both addressing ways of capturing and conveying quality information
• W3C’s Best Practices for Spatial Data on the Web aims to improve discoverability and accessibility of geodata

Other RDA IGs whose activities are of interest and who we will interact with:

• Metadata
• Registries
• Brokering
• PIDs
• Research data collections

Participation:

The Data Search Birds of a Feather session at RDA7 attracted 41 people, with additional people who could not come to Tokyo expressing interest. Some of the names appearing below come from this initial group, and we expect others will join when an announcement about the formation of the IG is made.

Outcomes:

A detailed set of deliverables is to be discussed when the IG meets, but can include those mentioned under use cases and objectives, above.

Mechanism:

We plan to meet via video conferencing at least monthly, initially, with ongoing discussions via email and biannually at the RDA Plenary meetings.

Timeline:

M0 – Hold kickoff meeting at RDA Plenary 8

M1 – Establish web presence and mailing list, hold initial virtual meeting, prioritize deliverables, distribute workload

M3 – Draft an initial set of use cases; form subgroups around use cases

M6 – Post use cases to workspace and announce on RDA email list

M8 – Subgroups report out on analysis of feedback on use cases (RDA #9)

M9 – Draft case statements for promising use cases

M12 – Finalize use cases, decide on next steps; presentation at RDA Plenary #10

Potential Group Members: (the following people have agreed to join. We realize this is a US-only list, and aim to rectiry this: several non-US members have indicated, but not yet confirmed, their interest)