A database/wiki/catalogue of proprietary experimental binary files within the NFDI?

Question

Dear NFDI4Ing,

As part of my work as a Data Steward in the field of natural science, I support my scientific colleagues in providing source code for parsing proprietary binary (unfortunately undocumented) file formats to become more FAIR and device manufacturer-independent.

I would like to ask whether the NFDI (or a specific consortia) maintains a database/wiki, where the specifications and details of such binary files can be shared, so that other scientists do not constantly have to try to decipher/reverse-engineer files themselves or contribute missing information about the file contents as community rather . Does the NFDI or any consortia offer something like a common information platform (maybe across the disciplines)? If yes, could you possibly refer me to another consortium that collects and maintains such specifications? If not, do you know of a joint effort by the consortia to establish something like this? I have also made this request for a database/wiki/catalogue to the FAIRmat, NFDI4Chem, Base4NFDI, but they do not collect such information either nor they can name any NFDI-wiki/database/catalogue for that.

I think about something similar like this [parser example]( https://dgbowl.github.io/yadg/5.1/apidoc/yadg.extractors.phi.html ) describing the file content, but in a more user friendly way like a wiki and hosted by the NFDI or any NFDI-consortia... Community efforts like Forschungsdaten.org (https://www.forschungsdaten.org/index.php/Hauptseite) or the ELN-finder (https://eln-finder.ulb.tu-darmstadt.de/home) are good example for shared information across communities. Maybe I'm stress that I'm not looking for technical implementation like parsers, indeed I'm looking for place, where I can deposit any file specifications to enable the "Interoperability", because at the moment everything seems scattered in the web/github/gitlab.

Do you have any advice, there and how to put the documentation - and maybe an example implementation - on a established well-known location for the scientific community? Or is there any service you aware of?

Best, Ron

Answer 1

Hi Ron,

I cannot answer to the more technical component of your question, but can forward some information gathered in a brief exchange with other NFDI helpdesks on the matter. One takeaway was that there is a legal component to the question in addition to the technical aspect. Specifications of proprietary formats are usually not public because they are regarded by manufacturers as intellectual property and protected as trade secrets from third parties. 

It's therefore rather unlikely that these specifications will be made available through official channels. There is an RDA group that is working to encourage device manufacturers to adopt open standards. Perhaps they can help: FAIR Principles for Research Hardware (FAIR4RH) (thx @ Cord Wiljes, NFDI).

Comments

Update: Apparently NFDI-MatWerk is developing a mapping service to extract metadata from SEM/TEM instruments: https://matwerk.datamanager.kit.edu/frontend/dashboard.html
The corresponding GitHub repository can be found here: https://github.com/kit-data-manager/mapping-service