Glossary#

This page defines the terms a portal developer, administrator or user meets in a FairDM portal. It does not explain how the parts fit together. For that, start with the core data model.

Account state#: Where a person stands with the portal. A person is a ghost, invited, claimed or inactive. The portal works the state out from the person’s email address and flags each time it is needed. It is never stored.
Affiliation#: The link between a person and an organization. An affiliation has a type of Pending, Member, Admin or Owner. Pending means the organization has not yet verified it.
API token#: A secret a person creates on their account pages so that a script can call the portal’s REST API as them. A script sends it in the Authorization header.
Claimed#: The account state of a person who has taken over their profile and can sign in. See how a profile is claimed.
Community Manager#: A portal role. It lets the holder view and change people, organizations, affiliations and contributions across the portal.
Contribution#: One credit: a contributor listed on one record, with the roles they played and the contribution level they hold on it. Also called a credit.
Contribution level#: What a person may do on one record: Can view, Can edit or Can manage. Each level includes the ones before it. A person holds a level through their contribution to the record or to the record above it. See how access to a record is decided.
Contributor#: A person or an organization that can be credited on a record.
Controlled vocabulary#: A fixed list of terms, each with a definition, that a field accepts instead of free text. See controlled vocabularies.
Data Curator#: A portal role. It lets the holder view, add, change and delete projects, datasets, samples and measurements, and publish datasets, across the whole portal.
Dataset#: A collection of samples and the measurements made on them, held inside a project. A dataset has a visibility, a licence and a published flag.
Description#: A piece of text on a record with a type, such as an abstract or a methods note. A record can hold several.
Developer#: A portal role that carries no permissions of its own.
DOI#: A Digital Object Identifier. A DOI can be stored as an identifier on a project, dataset, sample or measurement.
Ghost#: The account state of a person with no email address. A ghost is created so that someone can be credited on a record. They cannot sign in.
Identifier#: A persistent code that names a record, person or organization in another system, such as an ORCID or a ROR identifier. An identifier value must be unique across projects, datasets, samples and measurements.
IGSN#: An International Generic Sample Number, the identifier for a physical specimen. A sample accepts an IGSN or a DOI as its identifier type.
Inactive#: The account state of a person whose account has been deactivated. It takes precedence over the other states.
Invited#: The account state of a person who has an email address and has not yet claimed their profile.
Key dates#: The dated events on a record, such as when work started or ended. Each date has a type and is kept as precisely as it was entered.
Keywords#: The terms that describe a record. A record carries free keywords, and a project or dataset can also carry keywords from a controlled vocabulary.
Measurement#: A single observation or analysis made on a sample. A measurement belongs to a dataset. Each kind of measurement is a measurement type of its own.
Measurement type#: A kind of measurement that a portal developer has registered, such as a spectrometer reading. It sets which fields a measurement of that kind holds.
ORCID#: An identifier for a researcher. A person can sign in with ORCID, and a profile can be created or filled in from an ORCID record.
Organization#: A contributor that is an institution, such as a university or a funder. It can have a parent organization, an affiliation for each member, and a point on the map.
Person#: A contributor that is an individual. A person is also the portal’s user account.
Portal#: A research data website built on FairDM.
Portal Administrator#: A portal role. It lets the holder view groups, view and change people, and change the portal’s identity. The same words name the reader who runs a portal.
Portal developer#: The person who builds a portal on FairDM and deploys it.
Portal role#: A named set of portal-wide rights that an administrator gives to a person. FairDM ships four: Portal Administrator, Data Curator, Community Manager and Developer. A portal role is not the same as the roles a contributor plays on a record.
Portal user#: A person who adds, edits and publishes research data in a portal.
Project#: A body of research that groups datasets. A project has a project status, a visibility and an owning organization.
Project status#: The stage a project is at: Concept, Planning, In progress, Complete or Searching for collaborators.
Published#: A flag on a dataset that says its data may be shown publicly. It is separate from visibility, which governs the metadata.
Role (on a record)#: What a contributor did on a record, such as Creator, Data Collector or Contact Person. It is listed in the credit and is separate from the contribution level and the portal role.
ROR#: The Research Organization Registry. An organization can be created or filled in from its ROR identifier.
Sample#: Anything that is measured or observed, such as a rock or a water sample. A sample belongs to a dataset and is always of one sample type.
Sample status#: Where a physical sample is held: Available, In Use, Stored, Destroyed or Unknown. A sample’s status can move from any value to any other.
Sample type#: A kind of sample that a portal developer has registered, such as a rock sample. It sets which fields a sample of that kind holds.
Visibility#: Whether a project, dataset, sample or measurement is Private or Public. A private record can be opened only by people who hold a contribution level on it and by holders of a portal role that grants the right.