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For the development of domain-specific metadata schema the focus is on metadata of datasets; discoverability of datasets (or in general, resources) in the National Health Data Catalogue, and information (metadata) on how to access or reuse these datasets. To a large extent, these discoverability aspects may be covered by DCAT-AP and HealthDCAT-AP as implemented by the HRI core metadata schema. However, domains may have additional wishes for the discoverability of datasets for their domain and that is the scope of a domain-specific metadata schema.
Currently the semantic modeling of the data (points) itself - metadata of data or so-called data modeling (e.g. modeling descriptions and relations between variables, values and records in a dataset) - is out of scope, even though it may largely follow the same steps. This kind of data modeling (and the process) will be picked up in plateau 3 (2025).
The use of RDF (Resource Description Framework) provides a way to represent metadata in machine-readable format and promotes the reuse of existing vocabularies and ontologies, which ensures interoperability across different domains (see I1 of the FAIR guiding principles). By using well established standards like DCAT-AP, FOAF and SKOS, you can describe datasets in a way that is consistent with our core HRI metadata schema as well as other domains.
While it is highly encouraged to reuse as many of the already existing terms as possible, RDF also allows the creation of custom properties that meet specific needs of your domain, if no suitable terms exist.
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Although depicted as a linear, sequential process, the process can be much more nonlinear. The steps serve as a guide to the activities you carry out and may run in parallel. Agreeing on definitions, modeling the semantics, and getting community endorsement can be very cumbersome, so working on a schema through repeated cycles (iterative) and starting small (incremental) may be more efficient than trying to be perfect and complete from the start.
Timelines
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and outreach
Below a schematic overview of how a timeline and how to involve your domain (see step 7) may look like.
How long this process takes depends on several factors, for example the capacity of your metadata taskforce, how well your domain is organized, what the scope is of your schema, how much modeling work has been done already in your domain, and how you work with your metadata taskforce. For collecting requirements and for reviewing you often have to give your domain some weeks to respond. It may be worthwhile to consider design (sprint) approaches where you block several days in row with your taskforce to work only on the model (see for example here) instead of spreading meetings over the months.
Contributors and contributing
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