FAIRagro Community Summit 2024

For the first time, the German Agrosystem Research Community has a place to address all questions regarding RDM all the way from data collection to reuse. Over the past year, we have started to get an impression on what matters to the community, which are their most burning questions and how to best reach out to research and beyond in a successful manner. In this sub-session, we will present our take-aways and visions for the future of our FAIRagro Helpdesk, including some of the interesting requests we have been dealing with so far.

In addition, we collect further needs from the community in a structured approach in order to further develop the DSSC in a targeted manner.

Data literacy is a key competence in data driven and digital science. We show what we have done over the past year to train researchers in the basics and particularities of subject-specific RDM and to enable them to apply the standards, tools and services developed in FAIRagro in their daily work. We illustrate how we help multipliers to further disseminate the knowledge and expertise from FAIRagro. And we describe what further steps we will take to empower the community to drive the cultural change towards a FAIR and collaborative RDM.

This workshop is designed specifically for potential future use cases. It provides an introduction to the Use Case call and addresses frequently asked questions (FAQs). Additionally, current Use Cases will present their progress and share experiences that could be useful for potential future use cases, offering an opportunity to interact with existing Use Cases and FAIRagro experts.

Research data infrastructures in systems agronomy encompasses multi data domains and implement heterogeneous standards. Thus an integrative access has to comprise genotype, phenotype, environmental and management data such as soil, phenotype, weather, cultivation/landscape management, geospatial and genetics. Therefore multimodality and interoperability is an essential prerequisite and requires a comprehensive middleware. We developed a concept, which do not intervene directly in the RDI autonomy, but just need minimal extensions to provide a middleware serving dedicated FAIRagro services such as data analysis and data integration workflow system (SciWin), the search and RDI inventory portal and allow a later cross NFDI integration.

Postersession:
Technical concepts for a central middleware infrastructure in agrosystem sciences (Meta)
guided by Daniel Arend (IPK), Jorge García Brizuela et al. (TA4)

The agricultural domain features a multitude of metadata and data standards, necessitating a comprehensive assessment. This evaluation considers the alignment of data standards with the requirements of available use cases and their adherence to FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles. An inventory of these standards has been compiled and will be presented, offering insights into their diversity and applicability. Additionally, ongoing efforts include the development of a schema.org extension, aiming to enhance findability and data sharing within the agricultural research community.

Postersession:
Data Standards for agricultural research data management 
guided by Gabriel Schneider (ZB MED), et al. (TA3)

Verified data quality is a prerequisite for the reusability of data in all areas of application. Concentrating on the agrosystem domain, we identified relevant metrics to describe the data quality along the whole data life cycle. Based on these metrics, we are building an interactive interface that supports both data providers and users in analyzing and improving the quality of data sets. As a mathematical framework, we develop flexible algorithms that we collate in an algorithmic suite for data curation, which aims at an automatic detection, quantification and resolution of certain quality problems. To communicate certain quality measures, we are focusing on appropriate representations of quality-related data annotations, which will become accessible and editable through the user interface.

Postersession:
Data quality and metric for agrosystem science
guided by Shiyaza Risvi (Uni Bonn), Sven Gedicke (Uni Bonn), Jannes Uhlott (JKI) (TA3)

The reproducibility of scientific data and findings is of great importance, but this is often not achieved. This is partly due to the difficulty of reproducibly executing highly individualized scientific data processing workflows on suitable platforms. The SciWIn platform is intended to provide an environment in which FAIRagro-specific data analysis and processing workflows can be carried out easily and reproducibly. Input data and workflow descriptions in the form of FAIR-annotated FAIR Digital Objects (FDO) serve as input vectors. The results of the data processing performed on SciWIn are also provided and saved as FDOs. This enables complete traceability and reproducibility of scientific data processing.

Postersession:
Scientific Workflow Infrastructure (SciWIn) concepts and possible application in agricultural research
guided by Harald von Waldow (Thünen), Patrick Koenig (IPK), Antonia Leidel (IPK), Jens Krumsieck (Thünen) (TA4)

FAIRagro Use Cases highlight the current challenges in agrosystems research, emphasising the difficulties resulting from inadequate data availability, infrastructure, and adoption of standards. They demonstrate that improvements in these areas enable more effective resolution of agricultural research questions. By building upon existing work and infrastructure, these Use Cases also serve to disseminate solutions within their disciplines and beyond, promoting effective communication and cultural change towards a fairer data future in agrosystem science and beyond.

As part of this Summit Side-Event, we aim to provide an opportunity to engage with existing Use Cases and gain insights into their FAIRagro activities and developments. Additionally, we will introduce the FAIRagro Use Case Call 2024, outlining application requirements, providing necessary documents, and addressing frequently asked questions.

Depending on the requirements of researchers, institutions and funders, RDM requests from our users are diverse so that not every helpdesk has the answer to everything. In this side-event, we will meet and greet with fellow helpdesks and RDM service providers and identify cases in which we can all profit from a network of experts with specific knowledge on a local, methodical or thematic level. We will then pose the question on suitable pathways in which requests can pass from one service point to another with minimal additional stress for the users while providing the best service possible. Ideally, this workshop will result in an overview map of helpdesk-clusters and service pathways for the agricultural and related domains.