2019 ESIP Winter Meeting

Session Abstract:
Researchers, data repositories, publishers, funders, and other stakeholders are increasingly obligated to ensure that data are not only open, but also FAIR - findable, accessible, interoperable, and re-usable. Various initiatives, projects, and working groups are working to advance the implementation of the FAIR principles, among them the AGU project "Enabling FAIR Data", the European GOFAIR initiative, and Working Groups within the RDA and WDS. This efforts are making it increasingly clear that many aspects of FAIRness, specifically reusability, are highly context and domain specific. The original FAIR guiding principles explicitly point to “domain-relevant community standards (R1.3.)”, but there are many open questions regarding such domain-relevant community standards: Who develops and maintains them? Who has the authority to approve them and govern them? How granular do domain-specific standard definitions need to be?
This session is intended to foster a dialog between data repositories, researchers, and other stakeholders to clarify and address the above listed questions for the Earth, Space, and Environmental informatics community.


Agenda:

1. Welcome & Introduction (Kerstin Lehnert)
2. The role of the International Science Unions in endorsing standards for interoperability (Lesley Wyborn)
3. Domain metadata (Ted Habermann)
4. Discussion in breakout groups
5. Synthesis and explore next steps

Session Takeaways (post-meeting):
1) Interoperability and Reusability are driven by community, and conventions are an important part of communities.
2) Interesting analogies with power adapters and rail gauges. As long as I’m within one country, I have a standard and everything works together. It’s only when I cross into other countries that interoperability enters in.