FAIR-IMPACT project response to "DRAFT: Developing and implementing the semantic interoperability recommendations of the EOSC Interoperability Framework"

In January 2024, the EOSC Association’s Task Force on Semantic Interoperability published a draft report called “Developing and implementing the semantic interoperability recommendations of the EOSC Interoperability Framework”. This report aims to enrich and refine some concepts covered by the semantic interoperability aspects within the EOSC Interoperability Framework (EOSC-IF) published in 2021.

FAIR-IMPACT aims to enable FAIR by supporting the uptake of tools, approaches and methods that are coming from various sources. This support is organised across scientific communities and at multiple levels (institutional, national and European). As the FAIR principles and cross-disciplinary efforts heavily rely on semantic interoperability, FAIR-IMPACT is keen to discuss the expansion and wording of related concepts through this open EOSC community discussion. 

This report describes the views and thoughts coming from FAIR-IMPACT work packages (WP) members dealing with semantic artefacts and interoperability, which correspond respectively to Metadata and Ontologies (WP4) and to Interoperability (WP6). WP4 is actively involved in scrutinising the use of semantic artefacts from different aspects: their governance, their design, their catalogues, their use for research software, their mappings and their uses along with data repositories. WP6 is striving to design and promote interoperability mechanisms across domains and institutions and foster global alignment of FAIR frameworks. By working in concert both WPs lead to better semantic interoperability with and between disciplines, and foster semantic artefact harmonisation across the EOSC ecosystem.

The FAIR-IMPACT response is organised in five main sections according to the five stated recommendations by the EOSC association Task Force on Semantic Interoperability report, which are:

1. Align emerging adaptations and implementations to the semantic view of the EOSC-IF reference architecture.

2. Identify and consolidate different approaches to representing and exchanging (meta)data with the FDO model described in the EOSC-IF.

3. Extend the EOSC-IF to include a research process perspective that can support convergence on solutions for common use cases.

4. Extend the set of semantic objects to include artefacts such as mappings and crosswalks.

5. Recognise the semantic artefact catalogue as a critical part of the long-term viability of any research data infrastructure.

Our methodology was: WP4 and WP6 members have been invited to express their thoughts on the suggested recommendations according to their expertise and experience in FAIR-IMPACT. Thus, WP6 members mostly reviewed the interoperability aspects, specifically the first three recommendations while WP4 members mostly focused their efforts on the last two recommendations in semantic objects. But this is not exclusive. From the WP members individual points of view, feedback was gathered and synthesised, recommendation by recommendation, by one author. The overall document was then reviewed again by WP members and the FAIR-IMPACT executive team.