BioSharing: harnessing metadata standards for the data commons

ABSTRACT The use of community-driven metadata standards, such as minimal information guidelines, terminologies, formats/models, is essential to ensure that data and other digital research outputs are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable, according to the FAIR principles. As with other types of digital assets, metadata standards also need be FAIR. Their discoverability and accessibility is ensured by BioSharing, the most comprehensive resource of metadata standards, interlinked to data repositories and policies, available in the life, environmental and biomedical sciences. With its growing content, endorsements, and collaborative network, BioSharing is part of a larger ecosystem of interoperable resources. Here we describe some of the activities under the USA National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s Big Data to Knowledge (BD2K) Initiative, illustrating how we track the evolution and use of metadata standards and work to connect them to indexes and annotation tools