The focus of the WG is on increasing uptake of the FAIR Principles in materials research (in particular in connection with Interoperability and Reusability), supported by improved resources, in particular widely-agreed and FAIR terminologies, metadata and ontologies. While the main focus of the WG is in the material sciences, close interactions with cognate domains, in particular chemistry, are crucial in order to avoid conflicting approaches and also to utilise and integrate with already existing semantic artefacts and resources in these fields.
There are a wide range of activities in several countries and world regions aiming to achieve FAIR data, support semantic data management and interoperability in the materials sciences and related domains. The WG will review the current landscape in the context of good practice and FAIR maturity and elaborate recommendations and guidance for practitioners working in the materials sciences and related domains.
Objectives of the Working Group are
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Collect and review existing vocabularies/terminologies, schemas etc. for the material sciences and cognate domains such as chemistry.
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Propose and verify best practices for materials science practitioners to achieve FAIR data based on terminologies, schema, ontologies etc
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Identify needs for harmonisation of terminologies and schema in the material sciences
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Demonstrate successful implementation FAIR terminologies, schema and ontologies in specific use cases
The WG objectives are closely aligned with (and support) the EOSC interoperability framework concerning its semantic layer. In particular, it addresses the problems and needs in Section 3.2.1 of the EOSC Interoperability Framework Document, namely, “lack of common explicit definitions about the terms that are used by user communities”, and lacking “common semantic artefacts across communities (e.g., general ontologies that can be shared)” etc.
Acknowledgements:
The support of the RDA-Tiger programme is gratefully acknowledged. Also, some of the efforts have received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement no. 958371 (OntoCommons).