An analysis of crosswalks from research data schemas to Schema.org

The increased number of data repositories has greatly increased the availability of open data. To enable
broad discovery and access to research dataset, some data repositories have begun leveraging the web
architecture by embedding structured metadata markup in dataset web landing pages using vocabularies
from Schema.org and extensions. This paper aims to examine metadata interoperability for supporting global
data discovery. Specifically, the paper reports a survey on which metadata schema has been adopted by
participating data repositories, and presents an analysis of crosswalks from fourteen research data schemas
to Schema.org. The analysis indicates most descriptive metadata are interoperable among the schemas, the
most inconsistent mapping is the rights metadata, and a large gap exists in the structural metadata and
controlled vocabularies to specify various property values. The analysis and collated crosswalks can serve as
a reference for data repositories when they develop crosswalks from their own schemas to Schema.org, and
provide the research data community a benchmark of structured metadata implementation.

Wu, M.F., Richard, S.M., Verhey, C., et al.: An analysis of crosswalks from research data schemas to Schema.org. Data
Intelligence 5(1), 100-121 (2023). doi:10.1162/dint_a_00186