Building a semantic interoperability framework: towards FAIR mappings and crosswalks
Creators: name: Kesäniemi, Joonas
name: Suominen, Tommi
name: Le Franc, Yann
name: Nyberg Åkerström, Wolmar
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2023

description: This session will convene a global audience to address the theme Championing data beyond FAIR by answering to the following questions:



Can we define types of mappings that are used to enable semantic interoperability? 

What are the requirements to make mappings Findable Accessible Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR)?

What are examples of infrastructure components that can be used to realise an ecosystem to support machine-actionable mappings?


Building global data infrastructures supporting cross-disciplinary research and fostering innovation based on Open Science is a major challenge all around the world. The FAIR principles provide guidelines for designing data architectures, which support machine-actionability, allowing researchers to work with the ever growing amount of data with efficient tools. Interoperability, at the heart of the FAIR principles, has been explored over recent years in Europe, resulting in the European Interoperability Framework (EIF)[1] and the subsequent EOSC (European Open Science Cloud) Interoperability Framework [2] document,  and semantic interoperability has been identified as one of the key elements of interoperability solutions. Semantic interoperability is the ability of computer systems to transmit data with unambiguous, shared meaning. It ensures that the precise format and meaning of exchanged data and information is preserved and understood throughout exchanges between parties, in other words 'what is sent is what is understood'"  [2]. 

The practice of developing and applying (meta)data transformations that map information encoded according to one specification to another (mappings) is ubiquitous across academia and industry. Some of these mappings are developed to solve interoperability challenges in a single project or infrastructure (silo) and others to enable data exchange and data format conversions to a wider range of use cases (community). Mappings are everywhere and they are applied to enable interoperability at different levels, ranging from more structural changes (such as changing file formats) to more semantically focused operations (such as translating terms or scales used to represent different values). Software developers are transforming data structures to other data structures, repository managers are creating mappings from one metadata schema to another and projects/committees are documenting crosswalks between standards. Finally, researchers might be doing all of the above when evaluating, preprocessing, integrating and applying data from multiple heterogeneous sources in their day-to-day work. 

Semantic artefacts (i.e. controlled vocabularies, thesauri, ontologies) [3] and (meta)data schema together with mappings have been identified as essential pieces to build semantic interoperability frameworks and to implement the FAIR principles [2]. This session will focus on exploring conceptual frameworks and solutions for sharing and reusing machine-actionable mappings that enable interoperability at different levels. The session will present activities and outputs from three cross-national initiatives addressing the topic from different perspectives in Europe. The presentations will include showcases of tools and an envisioned framework for realising an ecosystem for machine-actionable mappings, taking significant steps towards delivering on the promise of an interconnected web of FAIR data and services for research data.

The first half of the session starts with an overview presentation of the semantic interoperability challenges addressed by the EOSC Semantic Interoperability Task Force. Next, the results of the FAIR-IMPACT project are presented in the form of a conceptual framework for FAIR mappings, followed by a structured discussion with the participants. The objective is to collect inputs and feedback to contribute to the specification of FAIR mappings and the ongoing landscape analysis of the various types and levels of mappings necessary to build interoperability frameworks. 

The second part of the session will be oriented toward the presentation of a service architecture and tools to support the creation, searchability and reusability of mappings. The FAIRCORE4EOSC project will present their infrastructure related work, which is designed to serve as a discipline-agnostic suite of components to facilitate governance, distribution and reuse of mappings as FAIR resources. The presentation will be followed by a short demonstration and discussion with the participants about additional requirements and wider applications for the service architecture. The feedback will be used to ensure that the further development of the components meets community needs.

The intended audience is anyone who has been involved with research data related mapping activities, such as (meta)data curators, software developers, ontologists etc, but the session is open to anyone who is involved in furthering interoperability for research and beyond. The session hopes to provide attendees with something that they can use, whether for potential adoption or as inspiration. 

References:

[1] European Interoperability Framework (EIF), https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/eif_en/ 

[2] European Commission, Directorate-General for Research and Innovation, Corcho, O., Eriksson, M., Kurowski, K.et al., EOSC interoperability framework – Report from the EOSC Executive Board Working Groups FAIR and Architecture, Publications Office, 2021, https://data.europa.eu/doi/10.2777/620649

[3] Yann Le Franc, Luiz Bonino, Hanna Koivula, Jessica Parland-von Essen, & Robert Pergl. (2022). D2.8 FAIR Semantics Recommendations Third Iteration (V1.0 DRAFT). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6276577