Over the past few months, OSTrails hosted the first part of its webinar series focused on the Interoperability Frameworks (IFs) being developed under the OSTrails Reference Architecture. As the foundation for interoperable research tools, this architecture responds to the research community’s growing need for tools that support seamless collaboration and information exchange. The three sessions covered the FAIR Assessments IF, the Data Management Plans IF (DMP-IF), and the Scientific Knowledge Graphs IF (SKG-IF), and brought together nearly 300 participants in total.
“We are building on top of the DMP Common Standard from RDA by creating an application profile and API specification for DMP platforms, enabling interoperability, extensibility, and alignment with real-world needs such as policy compliance and support for diverse research outputs.”
- Marek Suchánek
Main message.
The central message of the series is clear: interoperability and seamless knowledge exchange are essential for modern research. To improve transparency, efficiency, and sustainability across research workflows, digital tools and infrastructures must be able to work together across domains, platforms, and services.
Session Highlights
FAIR Assessments IF (previously FAIR-IF): Mark Wilkinson (UPM) introduced the FAIR Assessment Interoperability Framework, addressing the lack of coordination across assessment tools and inconsistent interpretations of FAIR principles. The framework proposes a component model that includes dimensions, benchmarks, metrics, tests, and algorithms. It supports interoperability and is designed to be embedded in tools such as DMP platforms to provide real-time, standardised feedback.
“We want to design and publish metrics and tests for a wider range of digital objects beyond data and including domain specific assessments.”
- Mark Wilkinson
DMP-IF: Marek Suchánek (CTU) presented DMP-IF as a solution to fragmentation and lack of machine-actionable in current data management plans. Building on the RDA DMP Common Standard, it introduces an application profile and a common API, enabling platforms to uniformly integrate with FAIR assessment tools, repositories, and SKGs while adjusting the by-design generic Common Standard for European research ecosystem. The framework supports policy compliance and diverse output types and will be supported by technical resources in the OSTrails Commons.
SKG-IF: Andrea Mannocci (CNR), introduced the SKG-IF and its importance in enabling cross-disciplinary research through semantic and technical interoperability. The session highlighted challenges posed by isolated knowledge graphs that lack structural or semantic alignment. Building on top of the RDA model, the SKG-IF provides a common data model, API specifications, and an extension mechanism to support alignment and integration across systems. These elements enable seamless data exchange and foster collaboration across diverse platforms and domains.
Why was it important for OSTrails?
The webinar series provided OSTrails with a high-impact opportunity to present its core technical developments and engage with the broader community. The events helped validate the project’s direction, and practical feedback surfaced, from inconsistencies in FAIR metrics to technical needs for DMP platform integration and SKG alignment. These insights are now shaping the ongoing refinement of each framework to better support real-world use cases.
“The SKG-IF isn’t magic. There’s no central implementation or governing body that operates a service or infrastructure to enable dialogue between different SKGs. That might sound reductive, but in essence, SKG-IF is a set of guidelines. Anyone who wants their SKG to be interoperable with others and compliant with SKG-IF must follow these guidelines.”
- Andrea Mannocci
Why was it important for the Research Community in general?
The series enabled the research community to directly engage with emerging frameworks and provide input early in their development. Rather than duplicating existing standards, the frameworks aim to complement and extend them, addressing real barriers to automation, integration, and reuse by:
- Improving trust and comparability of assessments;
- Enabling dynamic, machine-actionable data management planning;
- Supporting semantic alignment and reuse of scholarly metadata.
In doing so, they contribute meaningfully to the broader aims of open science, infrastructure alignment, and cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Conclusions
The OSTrails webinars highlighted a shared need across the research landscape for more aligned, automated, and interoperable infrastructures. Each framework is helping to bridge gaps, whether in FAIR evaluation, data management automation, or SKG integration, and their development is being guided by community input. As they evolve, the IFs are poised to support a more open, trustworthy, and connected research ecosystem.
Further Resources
Explore the full webinar series and access resources (recordings and slides) here.
Discover the documentation for the OSTrails Interoperability Architecture and its three Interoperability Frameworks here.
