Interoperability for cross-domain data has been explored on a technical level and through case studies. This work has included partnering with ISC Members to develop key pillars of the project, and to raise awareness of, educate and enable their communities in the understanding and implementation of digital unit representation.
A task group on the Digital Representation of Units of Measurement is collaborating with the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, and is making progress on converting legacy vocabularies (that are not accessible using web standards) into FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) vocabularies. The paper ‘Ten simple rules for making a vocabulary FAIR’ resulted from a CODATA-Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) workshop, and provides a blueprint for the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population-CODATA working group on FAIR Vocabularies in Population Science. The 2021 report ‘The Role of DDI-Cross-Domain Integration (CDI) in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC): Possible Uses and Applications’ was a significant contribution to these discussions, and the case studies were further explored at CODATA’s regular Dagstuhl Workshops.
Building on this work, CODATA successfully led a proposal to the European Commission for the €2 m, two-year WorldFAIR project that will continue this work, testing specifications for core interoperability with a set of eleven case studies, including one with the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry.