Documentation Cluster Minutes 2016-06-27

Attendees

Anna Milan, John Kozimor, Lindsay Powers, Sean Gordon, Tyler Stevens, Annie Burgess, Sean Gordon, Aaron Sweeney, Paul Lemieux

Agenda

Presentation: Materials Science Data Management Initiatives at NIST by Bob Hanisch

• Office of Data and Informatics
  • Standard reference data - undertaking modernization of apps and interfaces, all the metadata goes to data.gov, do charge for some of the reference data is for fee
  • Research data - NIST data portal
  • Data Science - informatics and analytics
  • Community - research data alliance, work with Network of National Metrology Institutes and BIPM

• Key ODI activities
  • 2 years ago - the practice was haphazard - trying to improve the data infrastructure
  • Materials Genome Initiative is a major stakeholder

• Goals
  • FAIR principles: Find, Access, Interoperable, Reusable

• Find
• acceleratornetwork.org/mse-challenge
• would like to go to a service to find "who as data on X or Y"
• Example from Astronomy: VAO

• Materials Resource Registry (MRR)
  • "not going to take over the world" with federated system
  • using OAI-PMH
  • challenge is defining metadata fields and terminology
  • new international WG with RDA to define new metadata schema that is appropriate
  • demo of keyword search with facet
  • draft of metadata terms

• Federated Architecture

• will be at the next RDA plenary in Denver

• MGI Code Catalog
  • will integrate 50-60 entries into the MRR
  • Metadata Schema that is used to describe the software - coding language, documentation,

• Standard Reference Data (SRD)
  • 1968 act
  • copyright
  • cost recovery
  • "UI Anarchy"
  • Socrata is a nice platform for display tabular data - APIs will help streamline

• materialsdata.nist.gov
  • DSpace - communities within Dspace can be public or private (most are private)
  • 20 communities currently

• Work closely with National Data Service (NDS)
  • NDS Labs environment allows sharing --- Docker Containers...

• NDS Materials Data Facility
• provides capability to link data to analysis
• NIST is strict about what can be deployed by NIST and and shared
• basic metadata capability - trying to ensure that it's interoperable with their other metadata

Interoperate

• Materials Data Curation System (MDCS)
  • python, MongoDB, SPARQL, XML schema
  • documenting actual DATA - not just collections
  • HUGE challenges: stored in 140 different formats, no common schemas, proprietary in nature (e.g. Vendor specific)
  • curator is breaking down these barriers
  • 3 steps to curate
  • Can create own templates, but try to encourage re-use of existing
  • There is nothing specific to materials, but can be used to describe any research domain
  • 3 steps to export
  • REST API - supports automated capture

• some things to think about
  • Quality metadata is KEY
    • metadata curation is non-trivial, can be costly
  • "whatever you do, you can always do more"
  • Important to address Interoperability at the proper scale
    • too wide vs too narrow - important to cast the net at the appropriate scale
• will often start with DC or DataCite and then add enough of that to support domain specific. If get too detailed - then no-one takes time to develop content.
  • Standards require community participation to assure take-up -- national, international..

Q&A

• LP: HDF has a collaborative forum with RDA on data formats. Finally trying to get a handle on who the HDF community is. Do any of these communities use HDF?
  • BH: not aware of any HDF use. Trying to get requirements for standardization, transparent, open-based format of instrument...?

• LP: are you hosting the code in the code catalog? Or just encourage publication and pointing to where ever it is hosted.
  • BH: the latter, unless we have developed the code. No code validation.

• AM: what is software metadata schema?
  • BH: was kind of ad hoc and started before he came, developed in house, but aware of Force 11 efforts.

• BH: there are a lot of technical solutions, but challenging to get community buy in. NIST is a PI oriented organization.

• AM: What worked/not worked in community buy in?
  • BH. pilot teams to work through process and document - see their team as being a solutions broker. Don't try to solve all problems at the same time. "one success story at a time". Top down mandates create pushback. 6 mos after he got there, was asked to work with IT and got $7 million and now working with their IT to build out a modern data management infrastructure that supports the Data Management LIfecycle. This has been a huge cultural challenge, IT hasn't had the concept of real data management.

• LP: Materials data facility and materials data repository difference?
  • BH: (didn't capture answer)