Pushing the boundaries of FAIRness!

FAIR Data. Open Data. Open Science. Metadata.

These are concepts and principles familiar to those who work with data, particularly those who specialize in knowledge sharing and making vital research widely accessible and usable. However, those who benefit from this knowledge sharing, but have no more than a fleeting familiarity with FAIR data or open science – agricultural researchers using AGRIS, for example – might be curious about how exactly these concepts and principles are applied in AGRIS.

Well, here's a great opportunity for them, as well as for dedicated data experts, to satisfy their curiosity by watching:

Ensuring the FAIRness of Metadata in the Open Data Mainstream — Requirements and Opportunities

A virtual presentation by Professor Marcia L. Zeng of Kent State University on Tuesday, 18 May 2021.

Curious, but want to know a little more about the presentation before saving the date? You can learn, as Marcia mentions in the abstract, how

Using the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) research data’s metadata in the pilot study, and enabled by the interoperability of the metadata structures, AGRIS effectively extended the metadata spectrum. Now, it not only continually covers bibliographic metadata of publications worldwide but also includes research data resources.

Here is another publication that might interest you. You can use the AGRIS search engine to search more than 12 million structured bibliographic records, many with links to full texts.

Fun fact: If you spent one second on each record in AGRIS, it would take you 140 days to go through them all!