Deliver FAIR Data With PHAIDRA

The FAIR data principles now form the established global standard for most research data management planning requirements. PHAIDRA has been designed from the ground-up to simplify the task of making data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.

Findable

Findability depends on metadata quality and consistency. And the standard of metadata is heavily dependent on the usability of your solution for the people uploading their data. PHAIDRA abstracts and automates much of the complexity needed to ensure digital objects can be found by both humans and machines.

With the ability to create metadata templates, customisable submit forms and to automate elements of metadata creation, PHAIDRA ensures that users do not have to be repository experts to get things right. In line with the GoFAIR guidance, PHAIDRA automates vital aspects such as: assigning persistent identifiers and ensures metadata is made publicly available, visible to search engines and machine-readable (an essential component of the FAIRification process).

Underneath this intuitive end-user experience, PHAIDRA still delivers broad choice and flexibility for repository administrators and data management specialists. PHAIDRA makes it easier to tailor metadata to project requirements and to implement and support data management plans. Support for commonly required storage and export standards can be easily customised to fit domain-specific schemas and individual project requirements.

Accessible

Accessibility has always been the primary goal of the PHAIDRA Project. Our objective is to build a complete stack, with all the components needed to provide both non-expert access and to build upon the powerful features of the backend Fedora Repository.

For end-users searching for objects, this means adding vital usability features, such as in-search image and document previews, as well as streaming services for audio, with support for a broad range of file formats.

PHAIDRA also provides an additional layer of domain-relevance to the way objects can be grouped, categorised, linked and thereby searched for. This can range from grouping according to the technical facets of similar/associated objects and datasets, through to groupings and taxonomies that may be more familiar to the end-user: from artistic genres and historical periods, through to source laboratory equipment, specialist research categories or data licensing types.

However, for many users access control is an essential flip-side to accessibility. PHAIDRA gives data owners the ability to define and differentiate access rights, create project groups, as well as providing comprehensive audit logs to see exactly who has accessed an object when.

Interoperable

Strong and relevant metadata is also vital for interoperability. Background, context and detail are vital for reusing, comparing and combining datasets as part of the vision of open data and open research. In this sense, a large part of what PHAIDRA delivers in terms of usability and encouraging data owners to provide comprehensive metadata, directly contributes to interoperability.

To help ensure metadata quality, administrators can also implement features such as controlled vocabulary and metadata templating with compulsory fields.

PHAIDRA also simplifies interoperability and repository integration by incorporating common international standards for data and metadata. This includes components for OAI Service integration and upcoming support for the Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL).

Reusable

PHAIDRA VUE and the PHAIDRA API deliver great options for rapid data reuse, and integrating digital objects stored in PHAIDRA into new applications.

When we built the PHAIDRA UI, our team made the conscious choice to organise the functionality we needed into a logical framework of components. As a result, all the functionality in PHAIDRA can be rapidly integrated into new applications.

For development and backend integration, PHAIDRA API delivers RESTful access to the full functionality of PHAIDRA through a set of defined JSON calls. While JavaScript developers have the added option of PHAIDRA VUE Components for rapid integration of our frontend functionality.