Working towards electron microscopies interoperability

The participants have different backgrounds in electron microscopy, a method with strategic relevance in multiple Helmholtz research fields. The group was formed through continuous interaction with HMC, including both individual counselling as well as interaction at national and international conferences.

A joint requirement engineering workshop in 2021, organised by HMC, led to the ambition of this community for more harmonised semantics in the field. With the support from HMC, a group of 20 active collaborators from Germany, Austria and Switzerland have started to jointly develop a domain level semantic artefact that is intended to be used as an alignment system for application level metadata in the future.

To support this, we performed text mining to identify relevant terms. We also organise regular meetings with the group. Apart from offering a regular chance for exchange on a scientific level, these meetings are used to train the community and increase their capacity to formulate precise semantic definitions, as well as to develop semantics in a consensus driven fashion collaboratively.

For the ongoing development, HMC actively maintains a GitLab repository. Further we will actively support the implementation of the artefact (as domain-level ontology). Due to continuous networking by HMC the activity is now also embedded in both national (NFDI MatWerk & FAIRmat, Platform Material Digital) and international stakeholder groups (RDA, MechaNano COST).