NFDI4Earth Label Status Report (NFDI4Earth Milestone MS3.2.2)

Milestone MS3.2.2 NFDI4Earth Label Status Report Robert Brylka ([email protected]), Jonas Grieb , Ronny Gey , Claudia Müller , Stephan Frickenhaus , Claus Weiland 2025-10 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.17856067 nfdi4earth.de Citation Robert Brylka, Jonas Grieb, Ronny Gey, Claudia Müller, Stephan Frickenhaus, Claus Weiland. 2025. NFDI4Earth Label Status Report (NFDI4Earth Milestone MS3.2.2) (NFDI4Earth Deliverable MS3.2.2). NFDI4Earth Community on Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17856067 License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons “Attribution 4.0 International” license. Acknowledgement This work has been funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) through the project NFDI4Earth (DFG project no. 460036893, https://www.nfdi4earth.de/) within the German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI, https://www.nfdi.de/). NFDI4Earth MS3.2.2 Executive summary The NFDI4Earth Label is being developed as a tool to support the harmonization of data infrastructures in the Earth System Sciences (ESS) towards a FAIR ecosystem of services within NFDI4Earth. The Label primarily focuses on assessing the technical interoperability and trustworthiness of repositories. This milestone builds on the first Status Report on the NFDI4Earth Label, which introduced the overall concept, motivation, and theoretical background. The present document focuses on the current release version, summarizing the practical implementation and community feedback, and outlining the next steps for further development. NFDI4Earth Label Status Report (MS3.2.2) Contributions Based on CRediT Contributor Roles, see https://credit.niso.org/. RB: Writing – original draft, Software JG: Writing – review & editing, Software RG: Writing – review & editing CM: Writing – review & editing SF: Writing – review & editing CW: Writing – review & editing NFDI4Earth Label Status Report (MS3.2.2) Abbreviations API – Application Programming Interface CTS – CoreTrustSeal DCAT – Data Catalog Vocabulary DIF – Directory Interchange Format DOI – Digital Object Identifier ESS – Earth System Sciences FAIR – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable FTP – File Transfer Protocol F-UJI – FAIRsFAIR F-UJI Automated FAIR Data Assessment Tool Handle – Handle System (Persistent Identifier System) ISO 19115 – International Standard for Geographic Information Metadata JSON – JavaScript Object Notation NetCDF – Network Common Data Form OAI-PMH – Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting OGC CSW – Open Geospatial Consortium Catalogue Service for the Web OPeNDAP – Open-source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol ORCID – Open Researcher and Contributor ID PID – Persistent Identifier REST – Representational State Transfer SOAP – Simple Object Access Protocol SPARQL – SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language SWORD – Simple Web-service Offering Repository Deposit URL – Uniform Resource Locator URN – Uniform Resource Name NFDI4Earth Label Status Report (MS3.2.2) Contents 1. Executive Summary 1 2. Introduction 1 3. Current Release State and Application Workflow 2 3.1. Assessment Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 3.2. Label Award and Public Representation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 3.3. Alignment with the CoreTrustSeal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4. Report on the second workshop on September 23, 2025 4 5. Outlook 7 References 7 A. NFDI4Earth Label Metrics 8 A.1. Table 1: re3data Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 A.2. Table 2: Self-Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 A.3. Table 3: F-UJI Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 NFDI4Earth Label Status Report (MS3.2.2) 1. Executive Summary The NFDI4Earth Label is being developed as a tool to support the harmonization of data infrastructures in the Earth System Sciences (ESS) towards a FAIR ecosystem of services within NFDI4Earth. The Label primarily focuses on assessing the technical interoperability and trustworthiness of repositories. Interoperability is evaluated through a workflow that relies on information retrievable from the re3data1registry of data repositories, while the trustworthiness of repositories is assessed using a questionnaire-based self-assessment. In addition, an optional automated FAIRness assessment using the F-UJI2tool extends the concept by evaluating interoperability at the dataset level. All assessments are based on a set of metrics that were defined through an iterative process within the ESS community. This milestone builds on the first Status Report on the NFDI4Earth Label (Grieb et al., 2023), which introduced the overall concept, motivation, and theoretical background of the Label. The present document focuses on the current release version, summarizing the practical implementation and community feedback, and outlining the next steps for further development, including the implementation, testing, and refinement of the current workflow. 2. Introduction Harmonizing research data infrastructures within the Earth System Sciences (ESS) is one of the key goals of NFDI4Earth, the German National Research Data Infrastructure for the ESS (Bernard et al., 2021). To support this process, the NFDI4Earth Label is being developed as a framework for assessing the FAIRness of participating research data infrastructures, referring to the principles of Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability (Wilkinson et al., 2016). The Label primarily focuses on the technical interoperability and organizational trustworthiness of repositories and introduces a structured yet lightweight evaluation process that complements existing certification schemes (Grieb et al., 2023). The conceptual foundation of the Label builds upon prior work on FAIRness assessment tools such as F-UJI, FAIRassist3, and FAIR-Checker4, which translate the abstract FAIR principles into measurable indicators for individual datasets. In contrast, the NFDI4Earth Label moves beyond 1re3data.org - Registry of Research Data Repositories. https://doi.org/10.17616/R3D last accessed: 2023-12-19 2Devaraju, Anusuriya and Huber, Robert (2021) “An automated solution for measuring the progress toward FAIR research data” Patterns 2(11). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2021.100370 3https://fairassist.org/ 4https://fair-checker.france-bioinformatique.fr/ 1 NFDI4Earth Label Status Report (MS3.2.2) the dataset level, focusing on repositories as active components within a larger network of interoperable services. Similar approaches have recently been proposed (d’Aquin et al., 2023), emphasizing the importance of governance, trust, and community engagement in repository evaluation. These ideas are reflected in the Label’s design through its self-assessment component, which complements the automated technical checks. The NFDI4Earth Label serves dual purposes: it offers researchers and data users a clear indicator for identifying interoperable and trustworthy repositories, while simultaneously providing repository operators with structured feedback and practical recommendations to strengthen interoperability and sustainability. In this way, the Label serves as both a quality mark and a mechanism for continuous improvement, contributing to the broader harmonization of ESS data infrastructures towards a coherent NFDI4Earth data ecosystem. The current stage of development represents the first operational release of the Label framework. It has been implemented and tested within the NFDI4Earth infrastructure, where initial evaluations demonstrated its technical feasibility and usability. Designed as an iterative, community-driven process, the Label continuously evolves based on feedback from pilot assessments and workshops, which are systematically analysed and integrated to refine the framework, broaden its applicability, and align it more closely with community needs. In this way, the NFDI4Earth Label develops dynamically as both a practical tool and a collaborative effort toward a harmonized, FAIR-oriented ESS data ecosystem. 3. Current Release State and Application Workflow The current release of the NFDI4Earth Label represents the first operational version of the assessment framework. It defines the components, data sources, and evaluation logic required to determine the interoperability and trustworthiness of repositories within the ESS. The implementation reflects the results of previous development phases (Grieb et al., 2023) and community feedback, serving as the basis for testing and further refinement. 3.1. Assessment Framework The assessment procedure is implemented as part of the established OneStop4All5service within NFDI4Earth. User authentication is handled through the NFDI Authentication and Authorization Infrastructure, provided by the IAM4NFDI6project, and ORCID7, ensuring secure, 5https://onestop4all.nfdi4earth.de/ 6https://iam.services.base4nfdi.de/ 7https://orcid.org/ 2 NFDI4Earth Label Status Report (MS3.2.2) standards-based, and reliable identification of repository representatives. As a prerequisite, each participating repository must be registered in the re3data registry of data repositories and classified as relevant to NFDI4Earth. The workflow integrates three assessment components, each addressing a distinct aspect of FAIR-aligned repository quality: 1. re3data-based automated assessment (mandatory) This component retrieves and analyses metadata directly from the repository's re3data record. The extracted information is evaluated against a set of predefined criteria, with particular focus on metadata standards, API availability, and the use of persistent identifiers (for a complete list of metrics, see Appendix, Table 1). 2. Self-assessment (mandatory) This component captures additional information not available through re3data, such as governance, sustainability, and institutional trustworthiness. The data are collected via a structured online form and contribute to the qualitative dimension of the overall evaluation (for a complete list of metrics, see Appendix, Table 2). 3. F-UJI-based automated assessment (optional) To estimate the FAIRness of data holdings at the dataset level, a subset of records is analysed using the F-UJI tool. The resulting metrics provide insight into metadata completeness and standard compliance (for a complete list of metrics, see Appendix, Table 3). The information obtained from the re3data record and the self-assessment form serves as input for the Label evaluation, which is conducted according to a defined set of metrics. The assessment result consists of individual numeric scores for each component. Where criteria are not fulfilled, detailed recommendations are generated to guide improvements in subsequent iterations. At the current stage, the F-UJI-based assessment remains optional, as it depends on the availability of an OAI-PMH8endpoint, which is not yet consistently implemented across all repositories. 3.2. Label Award and Public Representation The Label assessment follows an iterative process, allowing repositories to refine their entries and resubmit updated information as needed. Once all assessment components accurately 8https://www.openarchives.org/pmh/ 3 NFDI4Earth Label Status Report (MS3.2.2) N4E metric Guideline F-UJI Metric n4e:specifiesContent Metadata of records stored in the repository should specify the content of the data: the type of the object and technical properties like file format, size, and names. FsF-R1-01MD 10