[Ryan O’Connor]

Dear Biodiversity Data Integration IG members,
Greetings from Ryan O’Connor and Sveinung Gundersen, representing RDA TIGER and the FAIRtracks team. We are reaching out to individuals who we believe would be uniquely qualified and hopefully interested to contribute to this project, based on related work, previously expressed interest, and/or influence with projects that could benefit from our initiative.
Through a community effort, we want to harness and mobilise the wealth of functional genomics and other genome–mapped datasets across projects, genomes and species, spanning across biomedical as well as biodiversity domains. We aim to achieve this through consolidated FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) metadata and connected tools, expanding on previous work from ELIXIR and EMBL-EBI (https://fairtracks.net).
The exact use cases we will support are still open for debate, but here are some examples to give you an idea:
* Precise categorical search based on unified metadata across data portals, track hubs and genomes
* Integration of search capabilities in genome browsers, analysis tools and programming libraries
* Persistent and versioned long-term storage of metadata
* Persistent and globally unique identifiers for individual data files
* Precise sequence-derived identifiers of genomes and genome browser instances through adoption of the upcoming GA4GH sequence collection standard
* Support for genome annotation processes for novel biodiversity assemblies, meeting challenges recently raised by the Earth Biogenome Project
* Maintainable and scalable metadata transformation flows, following current best practices for metadata crosswalks, ontology mapping, etc.
We would like to invite you to two online kickoff meetings in September. We are eager to share our vision and technical prototypes, facilitate an open exchange of ideas, and encourage you to think big about the potential your expertise might bring to the table. The work will continue as an open collaboration in a new Working Group (WG) in the Research Data Alliance (RDA), with an estimated duration of 18 months. The initiative has been pre-selected as a demonstrator WG to take part in the Horizon Europe-funded RDA TIGER project, which will provide various support services to the WG throughout its lifespan.
The two kickoff meetings will take place on September 12 @ 08:00-09:30 UTC and September 25 @ 14:00-15:30 UTC to accommodate attendees from different time zones. We are encouraging those of you with an interest in this area to contribute to the group’s work plan and approach. Prior to these sessions, you have the opportunity to provide input to the group’s Case Statement – defining the group’s charter, value proposition, and engagement with other initiatives in the area. Please also add your name/details to the table at the bottom of the document. If you wish to be a co-chair of this group, please add your details to the co-chairs table too.
Please join us for your preferred session via the registration links below. We also encourage you to share this message with anyone who might contribute to the WG development.
September 12 @ 08:00-09:30 UTC: DETAILS & REGISTRATION HERE
September 25 @ 14:00-15:30 UTC: DETAILS & REGISTRATION HERE
More information and relevant links can be found in the working document of the initiative and on the Details & Registration pages on the RDA website (linked above). The FAIRtracks team has issued a brief survey to gauge community interest in the Working Group and will be grateful if you could fill out the survey prior to attending the meetings. The FAIRtracks.net website provides a wealth of relevant information and pointers to the community at large and to project-specific outcomes in particular.
Regards,
Ryan and Sveinung
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Ryan O’Connor
Senior Facilitator, RDA TIGER
Research Data Alliance Association (Europe) AISBL
Skype: live:roconnor101 | ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5386-3932
Work days: Monday – Thursday. Please do not feel obliged to reply to this email outside your working hours.

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