Abstract
The Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR), developed through a partnership between the Canadian Association of Research Libraries’ Portage initiative and the Compute Canada Federation, improves research data discovery in Canada by providing a single search portal for research data stored across Canadian governmental, institutional, and discipline-specific data repositories. While this national discovery layer helps to de-silo Canadian research data, challenges in data discovery remain due to a lack of standardized metadata practices across repositories. In recognition of this challenge, a Portage task group, drawn from a national network of experts, has engaged in a project to map subject keywords to the Online Computer Library Center’s (OCLC) Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) using the open source OpenRefine software. This paper will describe the task group’s project, discuss the various approaches undertaken by the group, and explore how this work improves data discovery and may be adopted by other repositories and metadata aggregators to support metadata standardization.
Highlights
There is a need for repositories to move beyond stand-alone systems by promoting interoperability
The Tri-Agencies have been engaged in community consultation around an Research Data Management (RDM) policy that is expected to provide a mandate for institutional strategies for RDM, requirements around data management planning at the researcher level, and expectations for the deposition of data that directly support the conclusions of research outputs into a repository [15]
The first phase of the project experimented with OpenRefine and Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) to identify the main issues and provide a proof of concept
Summary
Systems are slowly evolving away from the stand-alone model, whether through metadata aggregation services, discovery layers, or linked open data-based approaches (for examples of national and international aggregation services, see Research Data Australia (https://researchdata.ands.org.au/) and the European Union’s OpenAIRE Explorer (https://explore.openaire.eu/)). These models provide opportunities for the increased discoverability and interconnectivity of cross-domain datasets. The Tri-Agencies have been engaged in community consultation around an RDM policy that is expected to provide a mandate for institutional strategies for RDM, requirements around data management planning at the researcher level, and expectations for the deposition of data that directly support the conclusions of research outputs into a repository [15]. The policy, which is planned to be released in 2020, is expected to increase the demand for RDM services and has helped to encourage national coordination around RDM activities.
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