Scientists Steffen Franke and Markus Becker from the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology (INP) have teamed up with colleagues to develop the Plasma-MDS metadata schema. In the article "Plasma-MDS, a metadata schema for plasma science with examples from plasma technology" (authors: St. Franke, L. Paulet, J. Schäfer, D. O'Connell, M. M. Becker), this metadata schema has now been published in the Springer Nature Journal Scientific Data [1].
In the course of the digitalisation of research processes, the sustainable handling of data is playing an increasingly important role. The so-called FAIR principles [2] describe recognised criteria for "fair", i.e. findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable research data. The collection of metadata for documenting data according to a well-defined schema is an essential component of "fair" data. For the field of application-oriented plasma research, Plasma-MDS defines such a scheme based on a process-oriented approach that does justice to the multitude and diversity of the research methods used and takes into account that in plasma research, the development of diagnostic methods is often an essential part of the research process. Last but not least, the heterogeneity of plasma physics research data is also the reason why there are hardly any standards for the collection, documentation and storage of research data in this field.
At the same time, plasma technology is represented both in established fields of technology, such as plasma surface technology, and in new areas of application with great social potential. The latter include, in particular, plasma applications in the fields of medicine and hygiene. The establishment of processes and standards for "fair" data in applied plasma physics and plasma medicine is therefore of great importance and has been supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) since 2017 as part of the projects " InPT-Dat ", funding period: 2017–2019, funding code: 16FDM005 and " QPTDat ", funding period: 2019–2022, funding codes: 16QK03A, 16QK03B and 16QK03C.
The Plasma-MDS metadata schema was developed as part of the project " InPT-Dat " and forms the core of future developments of tools for sustainable research data management in the field of application-oriented plasma research. However, the metadata schema is deliberately open to data sets from other areas of plasma physics, such as nuclear fusion research or related topics, such as research on particle accelerators. The further development of this initial metadata schema and the establishment of an expanded research data infrastructure is being pursued at the INP together with project partners at FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure GmbH and at the Hamburg University of Applied Sciences as part of the project " QPTDat ". On the other hand, it is now extremely important that the scientific community adopts the plasma metadata schema, integrates it into local processes and actively participates in its further development. Initial community workshops have been held and further workshops are planned. The Research Department "Plasmas with Complex Interactions" at the Ruhr University Bochum is already involved in the developments and, with " rdpcidat ", provides its own research data repository using Plasma-MDS to describe the stored data.
With the INPTDAT data platform (https://www.inptdat.de) operated at the INP, there are now two repositories that implement Plasma-MDS. In order to make this step as easy as possible for other institutes and research groups and to create a basis for community-driven further development of the metadata schema, both the INPTDAT data platform and the Plasma metadata schema have been made openly available on GitHub: github.com/inpt-dat/.
