Ensuring the FAIRness of Metadata in the Open Data Mainstream — Requirements and Opportunities

With speaker Marcia L. Zeng, PhD
School of Information, Kent State University

Abstract:
The FAIR principles have been widely implemented in the open data environment during the past several years to ensure that published digital resources are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR). The principles refer to three types of entities, including data (or any digital object), metadata (information about that digital object), and infrastructure. In this presentation, the focus will be on metadata. After an introduction of the FAIR principles and W3C’s DCAT (Data Catalog Vocabulary) ontology, the presentation will report the new efforts of the AGRIS (The International System for Agricultural Science and Technology), a global public service provided by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN). Using the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) research data’s metadata in the pilot study, and enabled by the interoperability of the metadata structures, AGRIS effectively extended the metadata spectrum. Now, it not only continually covers bibliographic metadata of publications worldwide but also includes research data resources. The presentation will share the research findings on ensuring the FAIRness of metadata in the Open Data and Open Science movement.  

Bio:
Marcia Lei Zeng is a Professor of Information Science at Kent State University. She holds a Ph.D. from the School of Computing and Information at the University of Pittsburgh in the United States of America. Her research interests include knowledge organization systems (taxonomies, thesauri, ontologies, etc.), Linked Data, metadata, smart data and big data, database quality control, semantic technologies, and digital humanities. Dr. Zeng has authored over 100 research papers as well as five books. Her research projects have received funding from the NSF, IMLS, OCLC, Fulbright, and other organizations. She has chaired and served on committees, working groups, and executive boards for IFLA, SLA, ASIS&T, NISO, ISO, DCMI, ISKO, and W3C. Currently she is serving as chair of the Digital Humanities Curriculum Committee of the global iSchools organization, and as an Executive Board Member of the International Society for Knowledge Organization (ISKO). https://marciazeng.slis.kent.edu/