FAIR Principles

The Islandora 8 RDM Platform development is guided by FAIR principles for scientific data management and stewardship. As we move through the development and build of the Islandora 8 RDM Platform, we continue to identify our features that support FAIR principles; see RDM specifics in-line with the description below.

Findable

The first step in (re)using data is to find them. (Meta)data and data should be easy to find for both humans and computers. Machine-readable metadata are essential for automatic discovery of datasets and services, so this is an essential component of the FAIRification process.

Islandora 8 RDM Findable features: 

  • F1: ORCID identifiers are integrated into RDM objects
    • Users can create or connect existing ORCID identifiers
    • Users can authenticate using their ORCID credentials
    • The RDM Team are now an official maintainer of the Drupal ORCID contrib module
  • F1: (Meta)data are assigned globally unique and persistent identifiers
    • DataCite Canada
      • Dataset metadata is transformed into DataCite-compliant XML and can be successfully ingested by DataCite
      • At the time of publishing, the RDM Platform enables DOI creation for individual datasets.
    • GRID identifiers
    • CrossRef FundRef  DOIs
  • F2: Data are described with rich metadata
    • Adoption of DataCite Schema to model metadata for Dataset Object
      • A Text Extraction Module was developed by the RDM team, in collaboration with the Islandora Foundation, to extract, edit, and index text from both images (OCR) and PDFs
      • This Module has been packaged and distributed to the Islandora 8 & Drupal  Communities
      • A FITS Microservice with Ansible install was developed by the RDM team to ensure technical metadata is stored and can be accessed from the object. This FITS Microservice has been contributed to the Islandora 8 Community
      • Technical metadata is indexed in Solr
      • Indexing and discovery of RDF in Triplestore
      • Data objects can be retrieved by keyword search and by field based search from the RDM portal
  • F3: Metadata clearly and explicitly include the identifier of the data they describe  
    • Organization ID (Wikidata), funder and funding information (CrossRef  Funder Registry) have been integrated into the RDM Platform identifying:
      • GRID URIs
      • FundRef DOIs

Accessible

Once the user finds the required data, they need to know how the data can be accessed, possibly including authentication and authorization.

Islandora 8 RDM Accessible features:

  • A2: Metadata should be accessible even when the data is no longer available.
    • We have implemented permissions related to the deletion of metadata. Metadata tombstone metadata is maintained and an associated log message is recorded for the version.

Interoperable

The data usually need to be integrated with other data. In addition, the data need to interoperate with applications or workflows for analysis, storage, and processing.

Islandora 8 RDM Interoperable features:

  • I1: (Meta)data use a formal, accessible, shared, and broadly applicable language for knowledge representation
    • Drupal content type modelled on the DataCite 4.2 schema
  • I3: (Meta)data include qualified references to other (meta)data
    • The Library of Congress Subject Field Module, developed by the RDM Team, demonstrates the ability to configure a remote source as a source of external metadata, the ability to pull and cache local copies of the remote metadata, and the ability to link data objects to metadata attached to a remote URI
    • This Module has been expanded to include Wikidata lookups for   
    • This module has been published on Drupal.org and is in use by a number of sites

Reusable

The ultimate goal of FAIR is to optimize the reuse of data. To achieve this, metadata and data should be well-described so that they can be replicated and/or combined in different settings.

  • R1: (Meta)data are richly described with a plurality of accurate and relevant attributes
    • the research dataset object is informed by the required and optional fields of DataCite 4.2
    • GRID Institutional Name and URI
    • FundRef Funder Name and DOI

Source: https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/