ACTION-419: Write an email to makx about rda and fair

Makx's response:

Hi Annette,

Yes, indeed, I am involved in FAIR activities at RDA in the FAIR Data Maturity Model Working Group.

I do understand that the DXWG would like to promote the use of DCAT for the description of research datasets, but the work on the FAIR Data Maturity Model is on a different level. The agreement in that group is that the standards for the description of datasets should be decided by the communities.

When I started the work, I was hoping that the group would be willing to consider the use of cross-domain standards, but it was generally thought that that would be too much of a jump for the various communities, many of which have their own legacy standards.

There is also another group at RDA that is better placed to discuss a connection with DXWG, which is the Research Metadata Schemas WG. One of their planned outputs is:

A generic ‘conceptual data model’ with essential types and properties for research data discovery over the web. The model will be built on bioschemas.org, science-on-schema.org, schema.org, DCAT, DDI-DISCO and SSN schemas from some representative research domains, and data discovery use cases.

Their initial objective was to focus entirely on schema.org and Google Dataset search but they were asked by RDA to widen the scope and include other metadata schemas.

Some of the DXWG people, Alejandra, Simon, Riccardo and myself are also on that WG, so there is a connection already. Or are you thinking of a more formal liaison?

Makx.