BioSchemas Community Workshop

Wellcome Genome Campus, Hinxton, Ickleton room (South building)
19 November 2015

Introduction

ELIXIR, GOBLET, Pistoia Alliance and other organisations and communities in life science have stated a joint initiative - the BioSchemas - to create a system for describing and sharing information and online content about activities relevant to life science disciplines (life science events, training materials, people, standards and life science organisations). This Community Workshop will formally kick-off the BioSchemas group, and present its goals and activities.

Following a series of preparatory meetings, it has been decided to build the system, using schema.org, an already established initiative to promote and maintain schemas for structured online data. The BioSchemas group was established during a specification hackathon, organised at the University of Birmingham on 20-21 October 2015. The event captured and formalised the results of the preparatory discussions and prepared a reference specifications on how to describe life science events, training materials, people, standards and life science organisations.

The Bioschemas Community Workshop will present these reference specifications, collect feedback from the broader community, and outline the technical solution for implementation and adoption of these specifications across the broad life science community.

Goals of workshop

The aim of the event is to introduce the activities and objectives of the Bioschemas group and present its preliminary results:

• Introduce the BioSchemas project
• Present the community reference specifications for “events”, “training materials”, “organisations” and “people profiles”
• Engage participants and include their feedback to bring forward together the BioSchemas project
• Outline the programme and scope of the group for 2016

Agenda

Expected outcomes

• Agreement on the proposed specifications
• Work programme and timeline for 2016  

Venue

Ickleton room

South Building

Wellcome Genome Campus

Hinxton, Cambridge, CB10 1SD, UK

Attendees

• Rafael Jimenez (GOBLET, ELIXIR Hub)
• Martin Cook (ELIXIR Hub)
• Mikael Linden (ELIXIR Finland, ELIXIR Hub)
• Richard Holland (Pistoia Alliance)
• Aleksandra Nenadic (TeSS)
• Nial Beard (TeSS)
• Manuel Corpas (GOBLET, ELIXIR UK)
• Andy Jenkinson (ELIXIR Hub)
• Luc Deltombe (BBMRI-ERIC)
• Morris Swertz (BBMRI-NL)
• Premysl Velek (ELIXIR Hub)

Reference documents

• www.bioschemas.org (GitHub repository)
• Bioschemas presentation
• Event specification
• Organisation specification
• People specification
• Training material specification

Technical documentation to review

• Getting started with schema.org

• Schema.org extension mechanism

• Example of specifications

• Microdata

Minutes:

Attendees:

• Rafael Jimenez (RJ)
• Martin Cook (MC)
• Richard Holland (RH)
• Luc Deltombe (LD)
• Hedi Peterson (HP)
• Mikael Linden (ML)

RJ presented the BioSchemas project and the Event specification.

RH proposed to remove the Title column in the Type definition.  

Action: The group leaders will make sure this is done in their respective specifications.

The events specifications are very close to release. The plan is to release the Event specifications by the end of November 2015. After which, the internal review process will start. The BioSchemas communities will then have 30 days to comment on the specifications.

Action: MC to prepare the Event specification for release.

ML brought us the issue of personal data policy concerning the People profile. The BioSchemas community may not have the necessary permissions to publish all information, as some are considered personal. The Person group will discuss this issue and propose solution.

BBMRI-ERIC will be involved in the BioSchemas. Luc Deltombe and Michaela M. to be added to the community mailing list and invited to the weekly BioSchemas meetings.