Agri-food Data Canada @agrifooddatacan

All the Data, One Place — Now What? - Agri-food Data Canada At the Ontario Dairy and Beef Research Centres, we’ve reached an exciting milestone: all of our core livestock data — from milk yield and feed intake to activity, body weight, veterinary treatments, h...

Blog post!

At the Ontario Dairy and Beef Research Centres, we’ve reached an exciting milestone: all of our core livestock data is now centralized in a single database.

agrifooddatacanada.ca/all-the-data...

25.07.2025 20:19 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

To keep or let go? Historical data sources - Agri-food Data Canada I've been talking about data ownership in a few different ways and I have also been digging into these wonderful historical data sources. BUT! Where do we draw the line? Let's be honest that's another...

Blog post!

These are questions that archivists face everyday – but as a researcher – what do you think? Is the data you collected 10, 15, 20, 40 years ago have value? Should we make it FAIR???

agrifooddatacanada.ca/to-keep-or-l...

11.07.2025 15:03 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

A Comprehensive Analysis of Naming Conventions in Modern Computing Systems This AI-generated report examines the naming conventions in modern computing systems, analyzing their historical foundations and cross-domain applications. It categorizes naming styles into primary (c...

Wow, that's a lot of ways to name things!

zenodo.org/records/1583...

09.07.2025 12:26 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Can You Use an LLM to Write an OCA Schema? - Agri-food Data Canada Short answer: Not really — but also, kind of. Why you can’t just use an LLM to write a schema At first glance, writing an OCA (Overlays Capture Architecture) schema might seem simple. After all, it's ...

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Can you use an LLM to write an OCA schema?

While you can’t use an LLM to fully generate a valid OCA schema on its own, you can use it to speed up the process.

agrifooddatacanada.ca/can-you-use-...

04.07.2025 12:35 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Data Ownership – is it a thing? - Agri-food Data Canada Alrighty folks - this topic is getting hot and I love it! Time to move out of my lane and talk a bit about producer data - I'm referring to the wealth of data collected on dairy farms, sheep operation...

Blog post!

Data Ownership – is it a thing?

agrifooddatacanada.ca/data-ownersh...

27.06.2025 13:14 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Unit framing to standardize units - Agri-food Data Canada In research and data-intensive environments, precision and clarity are critical. Yet one of the most common sources of confusion—often overlooked—is how units of measure are written and interpreted. T...

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Unit Framing!

Documenting units can be ambiguous. The Semantic Engine supports a new feature called 'unit framing'. With unit framing you can write the units you want, and then you add their UCUM unit code (if it exists) to be clear.

agrifooddatacanada.ca/unit-framing...

20.06.2025 12:28 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1

At @agrifooddatacan.bsky.social we are building the www.semanticengine.org to help researchers write better metadata schemas. And we also have a data verifier to find those empty data cells.

18.06.2025 10:23 — 👍 0 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

MOBS 1.0: A Database of Interspecific Variation in Marine Organismal Body Sizes Motivation Body size is a fundamental trait influencing an organism's life history, ecology, physiology and evolutionary dynamics. While extensive body-size databases exist for terrestrial vertebrat...

🧵New paper + open database drop!
The Marine Organismal Body Size ( #MOBS ) Database is now live—85,000+ marine species, from plankton to whales, with standardized size data.
A huge leap for biodiversity, conservation, and climate science. #science #marinelife onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

05.06.2025 13:44 — 👍 149 🔁 81 💬 6 📌 11

Custom format rules - Agri-food Data Canada When designing a data schema, you're not only choosing what data to collect but also how that data should be structured. Format rules help ensure consistency by defining the expected structure for spe...

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Custom format rules

Now on the Semantic Engine, when you describe your data by writing a schema you can add custom machine-readable rules for the format your data should take. This helps to improve data quality and analysis.

agrifooddatacanada.ca/custom-forma...

06.06.2025 12:23 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Blog post!

Architecture of OCA Schema Language

- OCA embeds digests (specifically, OCA uses SAIDs)
- OCA is organized by features

agrifooddatacanada.ca/architecture...

26.05.2025 13:30 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

From Siloed Systems to Shared Success: Debunking the Myths of Research Autonomy in a Shared System - Agri-food Data Canada Part of the blog series on Collaborative Research IT Infrastructure In our last post, we explored why a shared infrastructure makes sense—highlighting how collaborative systems reduce costs, improve s...

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From Siloed Systems to Shared Success: Debunking the Myths of Research Autonomy in a Shared System

Autonomy in research isn’t about managing everything alone—it’s about having the freedom to explore, test, and innovate without unnecessary friction.

agrifooddatacanada.ca/from-siloed-...

16.05.2025 13:14 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Dryad | Data -- Chilling out: Cooler climates triggered divergence of Sabal (Arecaceae: Coryphoideae: Sabaleae) at the end of the mid-Miocene climatic optimum

Why share data and code? Because you never know when or how it can contribute to future work. In this example, researchers investigate the impact of cooler climates on palms using #opendata and #opencode to create a new analysis🌴🌴🌴

2024 dataset▶️ bit.ly/4kgv0Iu
2024 article▶️ bit.ly/3GRVPVa

13.05.2025 16:36 — 👍 3 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0

Format rules for data - Agri-food Data Canada When you’re building a data schema you’re making decisions not only about what data to collect, but also how it should be structured. One of the most useful tools you have is format restrictions. What...

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Format rules for data

Format restrictions may seem technical, but they’re essential to building reliable, reusable, and clean data.

agrifooddatacanada.ca/format-rules...

09.05.2025 12:15 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

Data Tool Spotlight: Semantic Engine, From Agri-Food Data Canada at the University of Guelph

Much of the data collected by researchers is not easily understandable and usable by others – or even sometimes ourselves! The Semantic Engine, created by the researchers at Agri-food Data Canada @uofguelph.bsky.social is here to help break down these barriers to open science: www.semanticengine.org

06.05.2025 20:25 — 👍 1 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 1

Présentation des outils de données: Semantic Engine, de Agri-Food Data Canada à l'Université de Guelph

La plupart des données recueillies par les chercheurs sont difficiles à comprendre et à exploiter par d'autres, et parfois par nous-mêmes! Le Semantic Engine, créé par les chercheurs de @uofguelph.bsky.social, contribue à éliminer ces obstacles à la science ouverte : www.semanticengine.org

06.05.2025 20:28 — 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0

Supporting your academics and research this semester. Image of the McLaughlin Library in the background.

We're gearing up for the summer semester, U of G! The library has so much to offer students, researchers, faculty and instructors this semester. Read this article to learn about upcoming workshops and programming, appointments, eLearning resources, and more: www.lib.uoguelph.ca/news/support....

06.05.2025 19:50 — 👍 1 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0

YouTube video by LF Decentralized Trust 20250501 ToIP EGWG AgrifoodDataCanada

ADC's Carly Huitema gave a presentation at the Trust over IP Ecosystem & Governance Working Group meeting this Thursday about schemas.

View the recording at the Linux Foundation Decentralized Trust YouTube channel

www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-NK...

#FAIRdata #DataSharing #AgriData #Metadata

02.05.2025 19:06 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

Historical data – challenges and more ownership quandries - Agri-food Data Canada I've been trying really hard to - as they say - "Stay in my lane" for these data ownership conversations. Sticking to the research data front as that is my comfort zone and that's the world I live and...

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Historical data – challenges and more ownership quandries

Extracting decades old data from the Ontario Forage Crops Committee (OFCC) forage crop trials.

agrifooddatacanada.ca/historical-d...

02.05.2025 18:55 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

A colourful melange of fingerprints and faces representing identifiers and identity.

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Identifiers and identities

Identity is a combination of both an identifier and associated reputation/authority behind the identity

agrifooddatacanada.ca/identifiers-...

25.04.2025 12:10 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1

Research data and data ownership – the continuing saga - Agri-food Data Canada I left off my last blog post with a question - well, actually a few questions: WHO owns this data? The supervisor – who is the PI on the research project you’ve been hired onto? OR you as the data col...

Blog post!

Research data and data ownership – the continuing saga

The next question for researchers to consider becomes WHO is responsible for the data and what happens to it?

agrifooddatacanada.ca/research-dat...

17.04.2025 12:20 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

entre de collaboration pour les données climato-intelligentes (CCD-CI). Agriculture intelligente face au climat : Recherche de solutions pour minimiser l'impact des pratiques agricoles sur le climat. Soutien à la recherche : Soutien au partage, à la gestion et à la gouvernance des données dans le cadre de projets de recherche. Écosystème de données : Développement de normes de données, d'outils pour les données en accès libre, de cadres de gouvernance et de partage des données, de ressources de formation, et plus encore!

Voici le CCD-CI! Nous sommes le carrefour sur les données financé par @genomecanada.bsky.social afin d’améliorer la recherche dans les innovations en omique pour une agriculture et des systèmes alimentaires intelligents face au climat.

27.03.2025 16:36 — 👍 1 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0

Climate-Smart Data Collaboration Centre (CS-DCC). Climate-Smart Agriculture: Seeking solutions to minimize the impact of agricultural practices on the climate. Research Support: Supporting data sharing, management, and governance across research projects. Data Ecosystem: Developing data standards, open-source data toolkits, data governance & sharing frameworks, training resources, and more! climatesmartagrifood.ca

Introducing the CS-DCC! We are the data hub funded by @genomecanada.bsky.social to enhance omics innovations in climate-smart agriculture and food systems research. Follow us for genomics agriculture news, open-source data processing toolkits, community-developed data standards, training, & more!

27.03.2025 16:36 — 👍 2 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0

Social media for fisheries science and management professionals: How to use Bluesky and Instagram, and why you should ABSTRACT. Social media tools have revolutionized how people communicate with one another. A 2018 paper in Fisheries summarized the use of Twitter, Facebook

New paper!

Social media for fisheries science and management professionals: How to use Bluesky and Instagram, and why you should.

This is the *first* paper in the peer reviewed scientific literature to explain how Bluesky works and how to use it for #SciComm 🧪🦑🐠

academic.oup.com/fisheries/ad...

11.04.2025 12:09 — 👍 597 🔁 218 💬 29 📌 14

Tips to standardize data - Agri-food Data Canada There are many high quality vocabularies, taxonomies and ontologies that researchers can use and incorporate into their schemas to help improve the quality and accuracy of their data. We've already ta...

Blog post!

There are many high quality vocabularies, taxonomies and ontologies that researchers can use and incorporate into their schemas to help improve the quality and accuracy of their data.

agrifooddatacanada.ca/standardize-...

11.04.2025 12:23 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Do I own the data or not? - Agri-food Data Canada ...and we're back to the data ownership quandry... Just when I think I may have heard all the different types of questions and situations that may arise in the context of data ownership - I hear a new...

Blog post!

Do I own the data or not?

The BIG question here – WHO owns this data? The supervisor – who is the PI on the research project you’ve been hired onto? OR you as the data collector and analyser?

agrifooddatacanada.ca/own-data-or-...

04.04.2025 18:43 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

OCA Package structure containing Bundle and Extensions.

Blog post!

Introducing JSON schemas for OCA

The Semantic Engine can continue to consume and use .zip schema bundles but now the default will be to export .json schema packages.

agrifooddatacanada.ca/introducing-...

28.03.2025 15:06 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Should we share our research data? - Agri-food Data Canada As data archivists and data analysts, this question crops up a lot! Let's be honest with ourselves there is NO one answer fits all here! I would love to say YES we should share our data - but then I s...

New blog post!

Should we share our research data?

"...if we go back and read the FAIR principles a little closer – you can see that they are referring to the (meta)data!!"

agrifooddatacanada.ca/should-we-sh...

14.03.2025 13:00 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Resiliency of Identifiers - Agri-food Data Canada Broken links are a common frustration when navigating the web. If you've ever clicked on a reference only to land on a "404 Not Found" page, you know how difficult it can be to track down missing cont...

New blog post!

Persistent identifiers (PIDs) play a crucial role in ensuring the longevity and accessibility of research outputs by providing stable, globally unique references to digital and physical objects.

agrifooddatacanada.ca/resiliency-o...

07.03.2025 18:43 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Decentralization and digests - Agri-food Data Canada Digests as identifiers Overlays Capture Architecture (OCA) uses a type of digest called SAIDs (Self-Addressing IDentifiers) as identifiers. Digests are essentially digital fingerprints which provide a...

Blog post!

Decentralization and digests

By reducing reliance on centralized authorities, digests as identifiers to digital objects used in research empower more flexible, FAIR, and scalable models for data sharing and governance.

agrifooddatacanada.ca/decentraliza...

21.02.2025 16:32 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1

Decentralization and Research - Agri-food Data Canada What does it mean for research to be decentralized? And how does this relate to ADC? I will use Learning Digital Identity (see also this blog post by the author Phil Windley) for definitions as I thin...

New blog post!

Decentralization and Research

The FAIR principles support more efficient and better decentralized and distributed systems

agrifooddatacanada.ca/decentraliza...

14.02.2025 13:38 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

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