CF Roadmap: Discovery metadata

[feggleton]

Topic for discussion

Topic for discussion

At this year's CF Workshop we divided the roadmap preparations into multiple themes. Discovery metadata was of particular interest to a lot of people and how this type of information should be captured through CF, if at all. If you're interested in this topic please comment below! The roadmap publication will include CF's future direction on this topic or direct users to other existing standards which should be used. I've written a few questions to spark discussion:

• Where should discovery metadata be recorded in CF?/how should it be recorded?
• Should discovery metadata be recorded in CF-NetCDF? or links provided to discovery metadata records ie. WCMP2 (WMO Core Metadata Profile standard used for creating metadata records in WIS2 catalogue for example)
• Does anything new need to be introduced? OR can we point towards existing standards i.e. ACDD

[lhmarsden]

I don't think ACDD is being developed - last update 2014 I think I read somewhere.

ACDD is okay for human-readability but some terms and descriptions could be developed to improve machine-readability. At MET Norway Arctic Data Centre, we have added to the descriptions, and have requirements instead of recommendations: https://adc.met.no/submit-data-as-netcdf-cf

The impression I get is that CF do not want to integrate ACDD into CF, but instead link to a certain version of an independently maintained convention. It will be interesting to see what approach is taken with provenance in this regard, as this might set the precedent on how to proceed with discovery metadata too:
https://github.com/orgs/cf-convention/discussions/389

If CF decide not to 'take on' ACDD or include their own recommendations for discovery metadata, then perhaps this does not need to be a section of the roadmap paper? Though it would be good if the collective voice of CF could encourage further development in discovery metadata conventions.