POLDER believes that the recent surge of interest in schema.org—driven in large part by the development of Google’s Dataset Search—presents a rare and timely opportunity to simplify and interconnect metadata discovery tools. Schema.org is a structured data markup format embedded in a dataset’s landing page. It can draw from existing metadata standards and provides a lightweight, web-native method for improving metadata interoperability. Importantly, it does not require data centers to overhaul their metadata systems or infrastructure.
However, the open and extensible nature of schema.org also presents risks. Without coordination, it would be easy for the community to repeat past mistakes by implementing schema.org in inconsistent or incompatible ways. Such divergence would defeat the purpose of adopting schema.org: to enable a shared, uniform approach to basic discovery metadata.
To mitigate this risk, POLDER strongly encourages all publishers of polar metadata and datasets to implement schema.org in a manner that aligns with practices established by the Science-on-Schema.org, Bioschemas, and GeoSchemas communities. The resources listed below will help ensure your markup is interoperable with this broader ecosystem.
Once your repository implements schema.org according to these best practices, it becomes eligible for indexing by the Polar Data Search (formerly Polar Federated Search). Please consult the best practice guidance below for instructions on how to implement schema.org correctly, and don’t hesitate to contact the POLDER co-chairs with any questions or for support.
POLDER Resources
The POLDER WG has finalized its first iteration of the “POLDER best practice guide to implementing schema.org for data discovery” and it can be found at https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7787161
The "POLDER best practice guide to implementing schema.org for data discovery" has also been accepted to the Ocean Best Practies - Polar Collections: https://repository.oceanbestpractices.org/handle/11329/2301
Members from the POLDER community volunteered to participate in two rounds of workshops (Both workshops utilized a single working agenda, to compile resources in one place):
- Jan 26th Workshop at the Polar to Global Workshop: recording here
- Feb 7th Workshop can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufgx3YViOFM
A sample schema.org json-ld file developed at the Polar Data Forum III in Helsinki, November 2019: https://develop.gcrc.carleton.ca/~ahayes/polar_data_schema_sample.json
POLDER Resources
Schema.org for Research Data Managers: A Primer - https://doi.org/10.1504/IJBDM.2022.128449
Polar federated search: New infrastructure to support the polar community - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polar.2023.100947
Community Resources
Science-on-schema GitHub repository: https://github.com/ESIPFed/science-on-schema.org
Science-on-schema How To guides: https://github.com/ESIPFed/science-on-schema.org/tree/master/guides
Bioschemas website: https://bioschemas.org/
Bioschemas GitHub repository: https://github.com/bioschemas
Geoschemas website: https://geoschemas.org/
Geoschemas GitHub repository: https://github.com/OSGeo/geoschemas
The Earth Science Information Partners have more resources and hold regular teleconferences to discuss issues. It's quick and easy to join, and participation is encouraged. Details are here: http://wiki.esipfed.org/index.php/Schema.org_Cluster
If you are interested in exploring new tools for developing federated search, you can follow the latest developments of Gleaner and its associated tools: https://gleaner.io/
Geocodes are developing prototype federated search tools that you can explore here: https://www.earthcube.org/geocodes
In particular, you may be interested in their tools that can search on either text or on spatial information (but not both at the same time yet): https://www.earthcube.org/webapps/geocodes/discovery/
This is a rapidly developing field and all the groups listed here are interested in your feedback about ways schema.org and its related extensions should evolve to meet the needs of the entire community. We encourage you to post issues on GitHub repositories and to join the various teleconferences and workshops that these groups are organising, to ensure that polar voices are heard.
