[Gary Berg-Cross]

Meeting title
Best Practices for Data Foundations and Terminology (DFT) IG (Remote Access Instructions)
 
Meeting Location: Commonwealth A1
 
Collaborative session notes:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Xec9qa7WY6p73Hs3bN8wfGFnOq6Zt4342Vw3ArHZjzE/edit
 
Short introduction describing the scope of the group and if any previous activities
DFT has long sought to support one of the key ingredient to RDA meetings – the pursuit of understanding about research, data and its foundations. Our plan for this DFT session is to continue this support collaborative discussions of vocabulary practices as well as updates on data definitions and tool enhancement. Our initial focus has been, as our name says, has been to clarify data concepts. This work is often is sparked by such core but general ideas as “Useful data” or “Interoperable data” or “FAIR data.” Agreement on the meaning of research terms remains centrally important to RDA goals and is part of Plenary discussions. Discussion of DFT vocabulary refinement and expansions continue at each Plenary session based on some pre-Plenary communications as well as from audience participation. Notably, however, RDA interests have grown to include more domain vocabularies and DFT sessions and related sessions have added discussion of and reports on best practices for domain vocabularies as well as data vocabularies. Among these more general best practices for use of vocabularies are:
1. How to avoid unnecessary re-engineering
■ Identify duplicate or strongly similar work
■ Encourage collaboration or merging (cf. Open Annotation and use of Annotation Ontology)
 
2. Encouraging re-use rather than de-novo development
■ Providing an easy way to locate existing work (approaches like FAIRsharing can help with this)
 
3. Reduce the creation of and reliance on silos
■ Which supports better sharing, interdisciplinarity and discoverability
■ As well as providing benefits of code development
 
4. Reduce conceptual friction and misunderstanding by better quality vocabularies which should either be…
■ Disjoint…
■ …or with overlaps that are amenable to easy mapping…
■ …or they should involve a discernable shared sub-vocabulary between then
 
5. The value of using templates to create standard vocabularies. Including the topic of best practice for vocabularies in DFT-IG sessions will help more RDA group by supporting broader model and vocabulary agreements within and across RDA groups (and representative communities and stakeholders). As part of the last few Plenaries there is increasing discussion of FAIR principles and practices and some of the terminology involved has been added to the DFT collection. Areas of recent discussion include distinctions about infrastructure such as “middleware infrastructure” “Open Access” and concepts within the FAIR principles such as “Fairsharing.” In the last few months “Go FAIR”, “FAIR use”, “FAIR data principle”, “Go FAIR pillars”, “FAIR-compliant”, and “FAIR metrics” have been included as part of the defined concepts in the DFT term tool and others are being added to support RDA group discussions both in light of discussions at P12 and in preparation for P13.
 
Analysis of word and group clusters have also been part of DFT vocabulary development. These provide some big picture insight into RDA’s overall direction as well as FAIR activities. This session will allow an opportunity to enhance the RDA core and show it connections to broad-interest topic such as FAIR activities. DFT IG also includes contact and coordination with groups outside of RDA who are working on data vocabularies. Earlier Plenaries included a special discussions on extant data vocabulary efforts such as a special focus on the International Research Data Management glossary (IRiDiuM) supported by RDC, CASRAI, and CODATA. Before the Plenary we will check for an update on IriDiuM and the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) as to an interest in relations to DFT. In support of preparation for P13 the co-chairs continue to maintain contact with several RDA groups, such as the MIG to check on candidate terms for population in the DFT term tool called TeD-T. The newly invigorated Vocabulary and Semantic Services IG may also provide some opportunity for cross session briefings. DFT chairs expect some interactions at the January Chairs meeting at NIST to continue these conversations in preparation for P13.
 
Additional links to informative material related to the group

https://rd-alliance.org/groups/data-foundations-and-terminology-ig.html
A page summary of DFT is available at:https://www.rd-alliance.org/data-foundations-and-terminology-ig-overview…
Some slides available – see the DFT site for P12 overviews and updates by Gary Berg-Cross https://www.rd-alliance.org/dft-p12-brief https://www.rd-alliance.org/dft-tedt-update-p12

 
Meeting objectives
This session will present a stable version 4.0 of the vocabulary – AKA Philadelphia. This will include updates from the P12 and 2 chairs collaborative discussions which including discussion of the evolving landscape of core RDA topics including how FAIR concepts relate. In addition some general, best practices will be discussed in this FAIR context. The intent is to support continued synchronization of RDA conceptualization and enable better understanding within and between RDA groups. In addition our intent is to provide updates on the term tool operation, functionality and use by groups as well as the use of term definitions to support group cooperation. The session will continue or effort to allow newer groups to present their vocabularies issues to the group and discuss relations to other groups and their definitions. We expect, for example, as in previous years that several terms around open data to be completed along with progress on metadata profiles. Some additional ideas for topics will have been developed as part of DFT-IG discussions with RDA groups and their interest in DFT briefings as part of their sessions. We are making efforts to present in other groups sessions as an outreach effort and as a result we expect to have updates on ideas from these as well as participation from those groups as time and interest allow. Improvements in the contextual depth of definitions will be discussed to support synchronized conceptualization as well as to enable better understanding within and between communities. Such discussion is often facilitated by construction of conceptual maps. These visualization are more easily understood and can show key relations between and among termed concept. As an illustrated example we expect to display a draft FAIR concept concept map. One potential area of interest is the newly invigorated terminological services IG, which has again become an active group. DFT remains interested in various vocabulary services including mapping between vocabularies and finding similar terms and will therefore interact with the Vocabulary and Semantic Services Interest Group (VSIG). Issues under discussion: Reducing the friction & misunderstanding between quality vocabularies How to use lightweight conceptual and knowledge graphs for better vocabulary representation. Update on vocabulary cohesion, distinction and coverage by defining additional relations and useful links between and among terms. How to handle data definition update and mutability as concepts change over time. Interest in handling similarity and overlap between terms including those as part of other data vocabulary development. A shared repository may be a useful tool as would robust vocabulary services. How to satisfy the need to add more rich, contextual semantics to metadata as discussed at prior Chairs meeting. Meeting agenda The following is the working agenda for the DFT Breakout session at P13. It is similar to previous sessions but includes more opportunity to talk about best vocabulary practices. An Overview of DFT IG history & the Breakout Session Agenda- (updated 2 page handout as background) Explaining the latest additions to the DFT vocabulary for core RDA area such “Repository certification” and the like. A brief update of the Ted-T tool used to capture vocabularies and progress in sharing vocabularies and Status of version 4.0. Group discussion of vocabulary best practices and relation to quality vocabularies Solicitation from other RDA IGs and WGs about current/near term candidate vocabulary items. These may include: MIG and related RDA work Vocabulary Service IG L4RD IG The session will conclude with a summary of the results and next steps.
 
Target audience

MIG
L4RD
IG Data in Context
Vocabulary and Semantic Services Interest Group – VSIG Data
Discovery Paradigms IG
Big Data IG
Small Unmanned Aircraft Systems’ Data IG
Research Data Repository Interoperability WG
FAIR Data Maturity Model WG
FAIRSharing Registry: connecting data policies, standards & databases
WG Data policy standardization and implementation IG
Mapping the Landscape IG
Other data vocabulary efforts such as IriDiuM

 
Group chair serving as contact person:
Gary Berg-Cross
 
Type of meeting:
Informative meeting
 
Remote Access Instructions
coming soon

Discussion