Data Discovery Paradigms IG

RDA Interest Group Charter

Name of Interest Group:  Data Discovery Paradigms IG

Introduction:

The F.A.I.R. Principles, i.e. that data should be “Findable, Accessible, Interpretable and Reusable”, have become a key theme of Open Science. 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.

Objectives:

The objectives for this interest group 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 deliver guidelines and recommendations that can be adopted by data repositories, infrastructure developers, data producers and data users to improve the discovery and use of research data.

Key questions the IG wishes to address:

At RDAP8, we identified a long list of topics pertaining to data discovery, which were then voted by the group members to a shortlist of 10 topics. The top 5 of these have been selected as the key Task Forces which the group is focusing on (linked to the wiki page for each Task Force). Three of the Task Forces were officially closed at the RDA P11 after producing the corresponding outputs; these were:

• Use Cases, Prototyping Tools and Test Collections 

• Best Practices for Making Data Findable 

• Relevancy Ranking 

• The task force from this interest group "Using schema.org for Research Dataset Discovery" started as a working group at the Plenary 14 (Nov. 2019).  Please sign up to the working group if you would like to contribute and be informed of future work.

The Interest Group currently has two active Task Forces: 

• User study of data discovery

• Data/Metadata Granularity

For more details on the full list of potential task forces and the process followed in selecting them, please see the page on Task Forces.

Timeline:

• Sept 2016 – We held a very well-attended kickoff meeting at RDA Plenary 8: https://rd-alliance.org/ig-developing-paradigms-data-discovery-rda-8th-plenary-meeting, where topics were identified,
• Sept-Dec 2016 —Through an online voting mechanism, the top 5 topics for Task Forces were determined, and chairs for these Task Forces Identified
• Jan - April 2017 — Task forces hold meetings determining scope, deliverables and timelines
• April 5, 2017 — We held a meeting of the IG at RDA Plenary 9 to discuss Task Forces' scope, plans and deliverables. see Minutes here
• May - Sept 2017 — Activities proceed for Task Forces
• Sept 2017 — RDA Plenary 10; IG meets, Task Forces report back.. 
• Sep 2017 - March 2018  — Activities proceed for Task Forces; three TF scheduled for closing after succesful conclusion of work.
• March 2018 — RDA Plenary 11; IG meets, Task Forces report back
• Oct. 2018 - RDA Plenary 12; IG meets, Task Forces report back
• Oct. 2018 - RDA Plenary 12; Research Schemas workshop
• April 2019 (P13): Data Discovery Paradigms IG: Reports from Task Forces and Way Ahead (slides)
• Oct. 2019 (P14) - Data Discovery Paradigms IG: Reports from Task Forces and Way Ahead (slides)
• April 2020 - RDA Virtual Plenary 15:

  • Inferring data searchers’ intent and their interaction with data discovery systems (group session)

  • Data Granularity BoF; user perspectives, data citation and data versioning (BoF session)

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
• ESIP's Semantic Technologies Cluster which is working on guidelines for using schema.org
• 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 Discovery Paradigms Interest Group is open to all members and encourages active participation through the Task Force mechanism. Task Forces have phone conferences on a regular basis. To become active in either the Task Forces or propose other activities for the IG, please contact the Chairs. 

Currently, the group has a monthly call on the third Wednesday, 12pm UTC. Everyone interested in the topic of data discovery is welcome to join the call.