The SoilWise project is a Horizon Europe project (Project No. 101112838) funded under the HORIZON-MISS-2022-SOIL-01 call.
SoilWise is focused on creating a prototype of an open-access knowledge and data repository to safeguard soils. Its aim is to consolidate and harmonize existing soil data and knowledge, making it readily accessible to researchers, policymakers, land managers, and other stakeholders.
SoilWise is a Horizon Europe project running from 2023-2027.
The SoilWise repository is a prototype of a technology which may be adopted by the European Soil Observatory (EUSO) during or after the project. Either way, the contents of the repository will be captured as snapshots at yearly intervals and stored persistently in Zenodo.
SoilWise aims to improve discoverability/findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability of data and knowledge (FAIR). Your (and any other) valuable resources will likely be used more and in a more effective way by other researchers and others looking for soil data and knowledge for their work. The availability of a good soil data and knowledge repository for research and other soil information in Europe should save users 25% of time in finding and using a remote dataset.
When adding your data or knowledge resource to SoilWise or when sharing your experiences on the usage of datasets discovered via SoilWise, you contribute to the goals of SoilWise.
REA is the agency facilitating Horizon Europe research. REA provides guidance to projects on how they should report their research deliverables (reports, academic articles, datasets, software, etc).
The publication guidance of SoilWise is well aligned with REA reporting guidelines. If you report your project deliverables and other project results according to REA guidelines, SoilWise is able to locate them. On the other hand, SoilWise encourages the use of a number of additional metadata tags, which improve discoverability and interoperability of the research output or resource.
Attach Diagram interaction
SoilWise harvests from a list of Trustworthy Digital Repositories and searches for resources associated with relevant Horizon Europe Soil Mission Grant Agreement numbers, the INSPIRE and the Dataeurope portal. When your (research) result is findable there, SoilWise will harvest it and display its metadata. Since metadata on eg Cordis or other repositories is not very extensive, we recommend to upload your results to a Thrustworthy Repository and reference that in your submission to the EU portal.
You can add your comment/question to the comment field below each record. Notice that SoilWise only displays imported content. Any improvement suggestions are forwarded to the data provider who is responsible of making the actual improvement. For many records, contact information is available in the record. Consider to contact the data provider for additional feedback, so they can edit the metadata at the source from which SoilWise harvests.
Go to our github repository
You can access the repository by clicking this link and then searching for a specific term. You can refine your search by using the Spatial Filter or the filtering options in Facets. You can also add more keywords or search terms in the search bar above by using AND, etc.
SoilWise aims to increase the FAIRness of the metadata records by developing smart tools to, among other things, complement metadata, increase findability by smart search options and facilitate the use of data standardisation software. However, ultimately data providers are responsible for ensuring that the metadata they provide with their resources is complete and accurate.
Each open-acces metadata record can be retrieved as an open machine-readable XML format XML format, containing persistent identifiers, using standardized metadata using common metadata schemas and vocabularies (e.g., Dublin Core, DataCite) and using Resource Description Framework (RDF) to link concepts and entities for the record.
SoilWise also welcomes metadata on resources with or without access constraints. It is then up to the user to access the data itslef. SoilWise will in no case facilitate access to a resource with access constraint without a user having the proper authorizations. SoilWise will not include metadata records which have an access constraints on the metadata itself.
Get in touch with us using the contact form, and we can discuss the options.
Scroll to the bottom of the repository page, and there you’ll find an overview of all tools and functionality SoilWise provides and is working on.
The understanding of the concept of a dataset varies between communities. SoilWise adopts a common definition; a structured collection of data organized and stored together for analysis or processing. SoilWise endorses datasets to be fixed sets identified by a persistent identifier. However SoilWise will not reject datasets which are changing over time (for example sensor live feeds), dynamic datasets. Dynamic identification may lead to unexpected results.
The INSPIRE regulation describes services (or API’s) as entities which provide access to a dataset. In the SoilWise Repository you may discover these services in your search results, they are
commonly related to the datasets they provide access to. In some cases a service provides access to multiple datasets.
The DIKW pyramid describes knowledge in relation to data, information and wisdom. In SoilWise we use a more practical approach; any described object not being a dataset, contributes to knowledge. We therefore prefer to categorize items by type, eg. dataset, video, community, project, website. The linkage between these resources is an important aspect of knowledge (and discoverability). This means that for each type of (project) result that a producer or researcher considers to be potentially useful knowledge to others, we encourage the producer to follow the steps under question ‘How can I add a knowledge or data resource to SoilWise?’.
Many projects create knowledge hubs in the form of websites or online databases. These hubs are envisioned to be adopted by a partner or funder after the project. In practice we notice that these hubs usually live for a couple of years after the project and then fade out. To prevent the loss of knowledge we endorse to create snapshots of the hub at intervals, a first snapshot at the initial release date and subsequent yearly snapshots, and for sure at project finalisation. The dumps can be deposited in trusted repositories as versions of the dataset. In the last months of the project everybody is busy with finalisation and the deposit of the hub content may be forgotten. Websites can be scraped into a zip archive using a tool like HTTRACK. Database dumps are best saved in an open SQLite format.
SoilWise checks for duplicate records during its harvesting from multiple repositories, SoilWise provides all repositories where the record is available on the right hand side on the metadata record as visible in the repository
The frequency of imports is configured based on the expected change rate of the source. At most on a weekly basis.
When creating a glossary for a specific scope, it is a good practice to build on existing work and use a format which is reusable. SWR will provide guidance on these good practices. Consider checking larger online thesauri, vocabulary services or codelist repositories (national or international) for existing standard terminology.
This data is typically received in csv or pdf format. Make sure to keep a copy of the original file and place a metadata file next to it, indicating authorship, usage constraints etc. For each column in the dataset describe the property observed, the unit and the procedure used. The datapackage, csv-ld or pygeometa approaches provide options to capture this information in a machine readible way. There are open soil data models or database templates available that can help create a sound project database, following current standards on this. Examples are https://github.com/ISRICWorldSoil/iso-28258.
Citation of the sources in a related journal article is a common approach to attribute the sources. However this information is not very explicit. Instead we endorse to reference the source data
explicitely from the dataset metadata record. For example Zenodo has a section on related works, where you can reference a dataset as ‘Is derived from’.
The INSPIRE community facilitates 3 implementations of sharing soil data according to the regulation; GML via WFS, SensorThings API/JSON and GeoPackage (SQLite). SoilWise endorses the second and third implementation options, but also facilates the first implementation option. Hale Studio is a desktop tool which facilitates the reformatting of your data to fit the INSPIRE model.
SPARQL, OGC:CSW, OGCAPI-Records, STAC, Opensearch, oai-pmh
The search bar in the repository searches in all the fields of the metadata records. The search will include results of search terms that are similar but not the same to the search term to improve the result through our keyword matcher functionality. The facet filters on the left hand side of the search results search in the keywords fields of metadata records only.
GDAL is a common library in the spatial domain. It contains a utility gdal_edit, which can set metadata tags on an existing GeoTiff.
However, to modify band metadata,a you need a dedicated script.
SoilWise is a project with an end date, we cannot guarantee the persistence of your resource at the end of the project. There are also practical reasons, such as the legal aspects of processing such data and the potential size of the repository. The Trustworthy Digital Repositories are a better fit.
If you add your dataset as supplemental material to your journal article, both resources share a single DOI. SoilWise fetches from OpenAIRE the relevant sources by DOI. If OpenAIRE indicates that a DOI refers to a journal article, SoilWise will adopt that. We recommend that a dataset is published seperately in a Trustworthy Digital Repository and reference it from your article by DOI.
Metadata templates are used in projects to indicate which metadata properties are or should be collected. We recommend that you create metadata for your data at least in the Dublin Core structure. This is usually requested also by Zenodo, DataVerse and many other repositories. SoilWise and the JRC will jointly provide a metadata profile to increase soil data & knowledge findability and reusability, that you may re-use and customize, if needed.
If you filled the metadata accordingly, SoilWise will automatically harvest your metadata in a few days. Please notify us if you haven’t found your dataset in SoilWise.
Check the documentation and guidance documents of SoilWise and the presentation on the Mission Soil Data Cluster if you are a participating researcher. If your question is not answered, please consider to post your question on the Mission Soil Data Community Platform.
Monitor our impact on European soil health by enhancing information provision and promoting the flow of soil data.
© 2023 SoilWise. All Rights Reserved
The project receives funding from the European Union’s HORIZON Innovation Actions 2022 under grant agreement No. 101112838.
