FAIR Data Maturity Model indicators

03 Jul 2019
Groups audience: 

Dear all,
I would like to draw your attention to discussion on the indicators that is
taking place on GitHub at
https://github.com/RDA-FAIR/FAIR-data-maturity-model-WG/issues. There are
currently a few members of the group engaged in these discussion and we
would welcome wider participation.
In particular, there is discussion on the following issues:
https://github.com/RDA-FAIR/FAIR-data-maturity-model-WG/issues/27
(Indicators for R1.1).
On this issue, a suggestion has been made to try to enumerate a small set of
crucial licence information, plus useful but not mandatory extensions. Such
an approach could ensure that currently used common licences (e.g. CC-BY)
would be compatible with FAIR data.
https://github.com/RDA-FAIR/FAIR-data-maturity-model-WG/issues/29
(Indicators for R1.3).
Here, two options are discussed.
One option would be to have two indicators - one that would be about using a
'common' (i.e. widely understood like Dublin Core, DCAT or DataCite Kernel)
metadata element set, or at least a set of metadata properties that can be
easily converted to a common one, and one that would be about use of a more
detailed, domain-specific set for cross-sub-domain interoperability.
The other option would be to have one combined indicator that would be about
using a 'common' element set with domain-specific extensions.
https://github.com/RDA-FAIR/FAIR-data-maturity-model-WG/issues/28
(Indicators for R1.2)
The suggestion on this issue is to define a set of criteria that need to be
satisfied for provenance - not in a prescriptive way, e.g. defining which
standard to use but analytical, i.e. which constraints have to be satisfied.
https://github.com/RDA-FAIR/FAIR-data-maturity-model-WG/issues/26
(Indicators for R1)
On this issue, it was suggested to look at the metadata element set under
development by the RDA Metadata Interest Group
(https://www.rd-alliance.org/groups/metadata-ig.html -- scroll down a bit)
as a potential base set of elements.
This issue is related to the more general issue of 'Rich metadata' in
https://github.com/RDA-FAIR/FAIR-data-maturity-model-WG/issues/13.
https://github.com/RDA-FAIR/FAIR-data-maturity-model-WG/issues/24
(Indicators for I2)
The discussion here is about how FAIR the vocabularies (or more in general a
Knowledge Organisation System KOS) need to be. An initial conclusion was
that both the indicators for I2 (standard vocabularies and FAIR
vocabularies) should be retained, but that at this point in time it cannot
be expected that data is described with fully FAIR vocabularies, because
there may no be many of those around, yet. So the indicator for the use of
standard vocabularies could be mandatory, but the use of FAIR vocabularies
could be a recommendation, and aspiration for the future.
This is related to
https://github.com/RDA-FAIR/FAIR-data-maturity-model-WG/issues/14, the more
general issue concerning knowledge representation.
If you don't have a GitHub account, you can get one at
https://github.com/join to contribute, and get notification of any comments
from others by 'watching' the repository at
https://github.com/RDA-FAIR/FAIR-data-maturity-model-WG.
We're looking forward to your feedback and suggestions!
Kind regards, Makx Dekkers