POLDER believes that the recent groundswell in interest in schema.org, driven by the development of Google’s dataset search, offers a rare opportunity to simplify and connect metadata discovery tools. Schema.org is structured header text that is attached to a dataset’s landing page and that can draw metadata elements from existing metadata standards. It is a lightweight way to share the load of aligning metadata standards that does not require a data centre to alter its systems and infrastructure for managing metadata.
However, the open and extensible nature of schema.org poses a danger, in that it would be easy for this community to replicate errors from the past by implementing it in divergent ways. This would undermine the reason for implementing schema.org - the need for a uniform way of sharing basic discovery metadata.
POLDER encourages all publishers of metadata and data in polar regions to implement schema.org in a way that is interoperable with the approaches taken by the science-on-schema, Bioschemas, and Geoschemas communities. The resources listed below will help you ensure that your schema mark-up is interoperable with this broader community.
By completing the Schema.org implimentation your repository can then be indexed by the Polar Data Search (frmrly: Polar Federated Search). Please checkout the best practices guidance below to find out how to complete the implimentation and please feel free to reach out to the POLDER co-chairs if you have any questions.
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.
