Geochemistry Scientific Content Component (Project Milestone)

Prent, Alexander; Wyborn, Lesley; Farrington, Rebecca; Lehnert, Kerstin; Klöcking, Marthe; Elger, Kirsten; Hezel, Dominik NFDI4Earth; ter Maat, Geertje; Profeta, Lucia

WorldFAIR Milestone 6, reported here, specifies work done and being undertaken for Deliverable 5.2 (due month 20), ‘Geochemistry Methodology and Outreach’, which has the following description: “This deliverable will outline the methodology used to develop and update FIPs and promulgate knowledge of them, including publishers to ensure the quality, interoperability and reusability of data in publications”. 

As geochemical data is collected on a diversity of natural and synthetic samples (rocks, sediments, minerals, fossils, meteorites, cosmic dust, fluids, gases, etc), from the Earth or other planetary bodies, there is an incredible range of analytical instruments used and hundreds of analytical techniques applied. This results in a community with many subdisciplines that produce typically ‘long tail’ data – data that are highly specific and small in volume. The community and the data produced are heterogeneous and overlaps of common minimum variables are scarce. 

We conclude that developing a single FAIR Implementation Profile (FIP) for all geochemical data will not be possible; rather, there will need to be multiple linked FIPs for geochemistry subdisciplines and at multiple levels of granularity. As a FIP is underpinned by FAIR Enabling Resources (FERs), many such FERs need to be publicly available or need to be published. By specifying any FER(s) that accompany each FAIR principle within the individual FIP, users of any geochemical dataset/database will have accurate documentation for each FAIR Principles, and thus enhance machine readability.

This Milestone describes progress towards developing a methodology designed to assist in defining the individual FERs required to fully describe the minimum scientific and technical variables used to describe any geochemical analysis. These FERs will enable the generation of multiple FIPs, facilitating published results to be reproduced and shared globally with sufficient metadata to make any geochemical resource FAIR for both humans and machines. 

This Milestone report then discusses how the components of this methodology are being executed in the community, discusses resulting progress towards minimum common variables of samples, discusses how to make best practices for geochemical methods available online and specifies a set of vocabularies published to describe methodologies.

The report is available on Zenodo.

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WorldFAIR at RDA Plenary 20: Synopsis 

The WorldFAIR project partners were present at multiple breakout sessions throughout the RDA Plenary 20 week, either leading them or delivering short presentations. This section presents selected highlights of the project’s presence at the Plenary. 

Describing diverse chemistry datasets across distributed data resources (FAIRChemistry – WP3, OneGeochemistry – WP5)

The Chemistry Research Data Interest Group ran a session titled ‘Describing diverse chemistry datasets across distributed data resources‘. The session provided updates and perspectives from regional and disciplinary initiatives relevant to chemistry, focusing on the challenge of describing chemistry data sets to enable interoperability and reuse across resources and domains. This was followed by a discussion that aimed to identify cross-community challenges that might be addressed through activities within the RDA. The discussion identified areas of focus that the group will aim to take forward, in collaboration with other RDA groups and community initiatives.

Presentations by FAIRChemistry (WP3)

As part of the Birds of a Feather session ‘Data representation in materials and chemicals based on harmonised domain ontologies‘ WP3’s Stuart Chalk presented the IUPAC Gold Book: A Compendium of Chemical Terminology, one of the series of IUPAC ‘Colour Books’ on chemical nomenclature, terminology, symbols and units. Stuart also showcased a Chemical Analysis Use Case in the session The Way to FAIR: from data collection to citation, and presented during the session Practical implementations of the I-ADOPT framework and future directions.

Agricultural Biodiversity (WP10)

Maarten Trekels gave an update on the WorldFAIR Case study on Plant-Pollinator interactions during the session Improving Global Agricultural Data (IGAD) Community of Practice First Steps and Way Forward

Cultural Heritage (WP13)

Joan Murphy gave a lightning talk during the session Expanding our horizons to new disciplines: harmonising on what is core to all on the high level objectives of WorldFAIR, the Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework (CDIF) and the potential relevance of WP13’s image file work for all disciplines.
On 20 March, Ari Asmi (WP14) welcomed WorldFAIR partners and RDA-EOSC Future Awardees to a joint networking event. The reception provided the perfect opportunity for closer collaboration between RDA projects with an EOSC focus and the WorldFAIR disciplinary case studies, in order to make connections along disciplinary data challenges, and to internationalise the European projects.

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OneGeochemistry: Towards a Global Network of Geochemical Data at EGU2023

MON, 24 APR, 19:00–20:00 (CEST)

During this Town Hall, the OneGeochemistry initiative will give an update on activities and progress, and will invite you to join a discussion on how the community can best help and participate in the creation of geochemical data standards. The goal is to broaden community awareness of and participation in the initiative, and to further learn from successful initiatives in other disciplines. Find out more.

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Formalisation of OneGeochemistry (Deliverable 5.1)

Report on the formalisation of the OneGeochemistry CODATA Working Group. 

Project Deliverable D5.1 for EC WIDERA-funded project “WorldFAIR: Global cooperation on FAIR data policy and practice”.

The WorldFAIR Geochemistry Work Package Deliverable 5.1 sets out to formalise the OneGeochemistry Initiative. With the exponential growth of data volumes and production, better coordination and collaboration is needed within the Earth and Planetary Science community producing geochemical data. The mission of OneGeochemistry is to address this need and in order to do so effectively the OneGeochemistry Interim Board has applied to become the OneGeochemistry CODATA Working Group. This application has been approved by the CODATA Executive Committee. The OneGeochemistry CODATA Working Group will be led by a chair and co-chair and will form expert advisory groups where required. Becoming a CODATA Working Group gives the OneGeochemistry Initiative credibility and authority to successfully pursue a long-term governance structure and accomplish the other WorldFAIR deliverables of WP05 (Geochemistry). 

Accomplishing an outline of the methodology used to populate and update FAIR Implementation Profiles and to promulgate knowledge of them, as well as creating a set of guidelines for laboratories and repositories on how to use FAIR Implementation Profiles and common variables to QA/QC data, will enable FAIRer (Wilkinson et al., 2016) geochemical data, which will in turn make interdisciplinary use easier. 

Geochemical data has direct application to six of the seventeen UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG#6 (Clean Water and Sanitation); SDG#7 (Affordable and Clean Energy); SDG#8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth); SDG#9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure); SDG#13 (Climate Action); SDG#15 (Life on Land) and FAIR geochemical data will accelerate the generation of new geoscientific knowledge and discoveries. Within the greater framework of the WorldFAIR project, this deliverable has come together in collaboration with CODATA (WP01 and WP02) and the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC, WP03). 

The full report is available on Zenodo.

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AuSCOPE

AuScope is Australia’s provider of research infrastructure to the national geoscience community working on fundamental geoscience questions and grand challenges — climate change, natural resources security and natural hazards — for the common good, into the future.   AuScope supports the acquisition, management and open accessibility of geological and geospatial data, and software to develop models and simulations. AuScope provides an integrated approach to geospatial and geoscience research, and its geospatial infrastructure underpins global positioning in Australia.