OneGeochemistry: Global Cooperation for FAIR Geoanalytical Data Policy and Practice

Geochemical data are pervasively acquired in the Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences, as they offer unique evidence for past and present processes in the natural world that advance scientific knowledge and enable solutions of societal relevance. But geochemical data today are difficult to reuse because of the heterogeneous and fragmented nature of the geochemical data landscape with incompatible data structures, inconsistent metadata, and disconnected databases. As new, data-driven and often interdisciplinary research approaches are rapidly expanding that promise to empower the next generation of scientific discoveries, the urgency for a new ecosystem of interoperable, machine-readable geochemical data is eminent. OneGeochemistry is an international initiative to promote data standards in geochemistry and advance a global network of geochemical data resources. OneGeochemistry has been pursuing a diverse array of strategic activities: engagement with data repositories, professional societies, science unions and associations, publishers and editors, funding agencies, government agencies, instrument manufacturers, and researchers; participation in the WorldFAIR project (https://worldfair-project.eu); providing open access to existing standards or best practices; and establishing an international governance for the initiative.  The geochemical databases GEOROC, EarthChem, the Astromaterials Data System, and MetBase that participate in the OneGeochemistry initiative, are actively cooperating to harmonize their data models and create FAIR vocabularies for metadata that will enable interoperability between the systems and can be adopted more broadly. This presentation will provide an update on the status of activities and outcomes that pertain to technical and policy aspects of geochemical data standards.