D4.3: Definition of the SLICES metadata profiles to support FAIR principles (initial proposal)
Creators: name: Panayiotis Andreou (UCLAN)
name: Yuri Demchenko (UvA)
name: Émilie Mespoulhes (SU)
name: Loizos Christofi (EBOS)
name: Stavroula Maglavera (UTH)
name: Christian Perez (INRIA)
name: Carmen Guerrero (U3CM)
name: Cédric Crettaz (MI)
name: Peter Van Daele (IMEC)
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2021

description: With the advancement of technology and the plethora of electronic data being generated and available online, there is a need to ensure the longevity of such data as well as its access to the wider research and innovation community. Easy and open access to scientific data can facilitate further knowledge discovery and research transparency. Moreover, with the rapid expansion of the digital ecosystem, the use of machines to process the vast volume of available data is crucial, as humans cannot efficiently and effectively perform the relevant data processing (e.g., find, access, reuse), without additional computational support. It is with the above in mind that the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) Data Principles were developed. The FAIR principles are intended to be used as guidelines for data producers and publishers, with regards to data management and stewardship. One important aspect that differentiates FAIR from any other related initiatives is that they move beyond traditional data processing, placing specific emphasis on automatic computation, thus considering both human-driven and machine-driven data activities. Since their publication, FAIR became widely accepted and used. SLICES wants to fully endorse and adopt the FAIR principles, acting as a catalyst to enable and foster cutting edge research, data-driven science and scientific data-sharing. SLICES, as a research and innovation eco-system, must thus define appropriate metadata profiles to cater for access and reuse of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data and services. However, due to the problems rising from the multi/cross/inter-disciplinary nature of research SLICES is aiming to support, opting for a union of several established, domain-specific metadata schemas and vocabularies is impractical and would decrease the efficiency and effectiveness of resource discovery, access and (re)use. Instead, SLICES aims to allow its users (and interoperating platforms) to uniformly find, and access any object, such as data, services and software. To accomplish this, SLICES defines a hierarchical metadata profile scheme, where each <em>digital object </em>is first described using a select set of common metadata attributes and then according to its type, the description is extended with a set of type-specific attributes. SLICES’s hierarchical metadata profile design ensures the full support of FAIR principles at the top level of the hierarchy where carefully selected machine-readable metadata attributes allow for easy discovery of data by both humans and computer. The second and third levels improve machine and human-understandability as well as machine-actionability, allowing services to access more information and understand complex and domain-specific metadata structures to take appropriate actions. The discovered data can be then accessed using SLICES authentication and authorization mechanisms. In what follows, we explain the initial design of the SLICES metadata profiles and show how they meet specific design objectives, such as interoperability, extensibility and adherence to the FAIR principles. These metadata profiles will be enhanced/extended throughout the lifetime of the project as the SLICES infrastructure design becomes more precise.