Support for Importing and Exporting DCAT Metadata

[posixeleni]

To support importing data from data.gov and exporting in the same format for data.gov to ingest our metadata.

Need to research this:

Here is the metadata schema used in the US Government, which is based on DCAT: https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/

As you can see, there are a lot of optional fields, but only a few required ones (title, description, keywords, contact, URL). We recently moved to the 1.1. of the schema.

Also note that Data.gov ingest local, state, and university data

http://catalog.data.gov/dataset?organization_type=Federal+Government

http://catalog.data.gov/dataset?organization_type=University

Regardless of what we do, we should make sure Data.gov harvests/ingests us.

Some additional links:

https://project-open-data.cio.gov/

https://github.com/project-open-data/project-open-data.github.io

And here is how Data.gov does the harvesting:

http://www.data.gov/developers/harvesting

[posixeleni]

Here is a tool we can look at when working on support for DCAT/RDF http://rdforms.com/editors/dcat/

[pdurbin]

I just added the "harvesting" label to this issue but http://www.data.gov/developers/harvesting doesn't mention OAI-PHM (which is now supported as of Dataverse 4.5) so maybe this is a different type of harvesting.

[tlchristian]

ICSPR just announced that it's retiring OAI-PMH harvesting for their repository, and is "exploring an API-focused solution that will involve delivering metadata using the DCAT-US schema." Has Dataverse considered DCAT-US for metadata harvesting? Please say "yes."

https://resources.data.gov/resources/dcat-us/

[pdurbin]

@tlchristian not that I'm aware of. Would you be able to create a fresh issue so we can close this one?

[philippconzett]

ICSPR just announced that it's retiring OAI-PMH harvesting for their repository, and is "exploring an API-focused solution that will involve delivering metadata using the DCAT-US schema." Has Dataverse considered DCAT-US for metadata harvesting? Please say "yes."

https://resources.data.gov/resources/dcat-us/

I just had a look at ICPSR, and it seems they still support OAI-PMH: https://www.icpsr.umich.edu/web/ICPSR/cms/3965.

[DS-INRAE]

Should this issue title be updated with a more recent version of DCAT than 1.1 as version 3 is already in review https://www.w3.org/TR/vocab-dcat-3/ ?

[pdurbin]

@DS-INRA I removed "v1.1" from the title. I hope that helps!

[cmbz]

2024/08/19: @sbarbosadataverse will post announcement to Community to ask if this support is still needed.

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Update. Done: https://groups.google.com/g/dataverse-community/c/KP9DPlOk3Po/m/wvAB1hIHBAAJ

[philippconzett]

Hi all,

DataverseNO is interested in Dataverse support for DCAT.

According to Wikipedia, "DCAT is the foundation for open dataset descriptions in the European Union public sector and was adapted by the ISA programme of the European Commission". It seems many data portals, especially in Europe, are based on DCAT. For example, Norwegian public data are collected in a data portal based on a Norwegian DCAT profile, DCAT-AP-NO, which is based on the European Commission DCAT profile.

In Norway (and I guess in other countries as well), research data produced by (public) universities should be made findable in public data portals. That's why DCAT support in Dataverse is important to us.

[CeesH]

Hi All, Thanks to Philipp for pointing me to this issue.

DCAT is a big thing in The Netherlands. Just as in Norway, a derived version from DCAT-AP-EU is becoming the national standaard for governmental (meta)data. A public consultation on this new version of DCAT (to be precise the Dutch profile of the European DCAT-AP-3.0 standaard) was finished in May. For the Dataverse based DANS Data Stations, especially DCAT related to Health data and DCAT related to Geospatial data, are top-priority, in order to create the connection to services like the European Health Data Space (EHDS), and our national Health data and Geo data catalogues.

So count us in on these Dataverse DCAT developments.... we have to do this anyway, and are even gathering resources at the moment to start the developments.

Cees

[philippconzett]

Good to hear, @CeesH! I just earlier today was informed that there is a public consultation on the new version of DCAT running also in Norway. Also, earlier this year, an Official Norwegian Report (NOU) was issued on sharing and reuse of public data. They suggest the introduction of a new national law on data sharing. Among other things, the proposal suggests a) using DCAT as the metadata standard for public data (cf. section 11.5.2); and b) that publicly funded research data published in (institutional) repositories need to comply with the proposed data sharing law (cf. section 5.2). For DataverseNO, this implies that we at some point should be able to support the description of dataset based on DCAT.

[CeesH]

@philippconzett yes.... there is no escape. In NL, most DCAT developments seem to come from/start at the geospatial community. That is why we start our investigations with the GeoDCAT developments. In the Health sciences, this is also a development not to ignore: https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckad160.037

[CeesH]

Two important initiatives in Europe, that is the European Health Data Space (EHDS) and the so called Health Data Access Bodies (HDABs), are based on importing DCAT metadata. In the Netherlands, our national Health Data Catalogue will also be established around DCAT. In other words, quite urgent to be able to export metadata from a Dataverse following DCAT. Would this be something for EU Dataverse users to collaborate on? Something to discuss at the next Dataverse Community Meeting 2025 maybe?
@philippconzett , @DieuwertjeBloemen, @DS-INRAE