Formats & representation: 4. Convert to standard formats

This step establishes which community or domain standards, profiles, formats and serialisations will be used to represent the research object and applies and validates them in ways that support the intended uses.

Standards can make research objects easier to interpret, exchange, process and combine across people, tools, services and communities. They can define required information, structural elements, datatypes, relationships, metadata, file formats, serialisations, packaging arrangements, terminology requirements and conformance rules.

A standard is not necessarily the same as a file format. A file may use a common format without complying with a community standard, while a standard may support several formats or serialisations. A research object can require more than one standard or representation.

Standards discovery and reuse

Find, assess and choose existing standards, profiles, formats and serialisations that can represent the research object in ways that support the FAIRification goal and intended uses.

This capability includes identifying standards used by relevant communities, determining what each standard covers and assessing whether it can represent the selected domain model, identifiers, metadata, components and relationships.

The capability can be provided through project expertise but also through authoritative guidelines from communities, standards registries, target repositories/hosting environments, standards organisations or other infrastructure providers.

Resources

Developing standards

Create, profile, extend and maintain a specification where existing standards cannot adequately represent the research object or support the intended uses.

This can include creating a new standard, but it also includes less extensive approaches such as defining a community profile, adding constraints, developing an extension or proposing changes to an established standard. Standards development usually requires coordination beyond the immediate FAIRification team. Domain communities, intended users, standards maintainers, repositories, software developers and other implementers may need to participate. An important question to ask is whether the required development capability can be established through collaboration.

This capability should be considered only after relevant existing standards and profiles have been examined.

Resources

Applying standards

Create or transform research objects so that they conform to selected standards, profiles, formats and serialisations.

This includes applying standards when a research object is first created and applying them retrospectively to existing research objects. It may involve restructuring content, converting formats, generating metadata, packaging components, preserving identifiers and provenance, and documenting transformation decisions.

The capability can be provided through data-processing tools, export services, repository submission workflows, conversion libraries, schemas, templates, and specialists in the implementation team.

Resources

Validating against standards

Assess whether a research object representation conforms to the requirements of a specified standard, version, profile or extension.

This can include syntactic, structural, schema-based, semantic, rules-based, completeness and cross-component validation. Different validation mechanisms may be required for different parts of a compound research object.

Validation establishes conformance with defined requirements. It does not by itself establish that the research object is FAIR, scientifically correct or suitable for every intended use.

The capability can be provided through official validators, schemas, repository submission checks, testing frameworks, quality-control workflows, community services or manual expert review.

Resources