NeXus Ontology and its Use for FAIR Experimental Data

The FAIR principles—Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability—have become central to the management of scientific data. In the realm of experimental science, where data complexity and heterogeneity pose significant challenges, semantic technologies offer a robust approach to ensure FAIR compliance. This presentation presents the NeXus Ontology, a formal, machine-readable representation of the widely adopted NeXus data format. Experimental metadata connected to ontology concepts enables enhanced metadata annotation and search capabilities. We demonstrate how the NeXus Ontology is integrated to the NOMAD research data management platform supporting the entire experimental data lifecycle, from acquisition and processing to archival and reuse. ^

This talk was held in the course of the DAPHNE4NFDI TA1 Data for science lecture series on May, 27 2025.