Improving metadata compliance and interoperability at EGA with Biovalidator

The  European Genome-phenome Archive  (EGA), an ELIXIR Core Data Resource, has improved its metadata model for better compliance, flexibility, and interoperability in accordance with the FAIR principles. This model encompasses a diverse spectrum of metadata, including human clinical and sequencing experimental metadata, and its validation rules reside within a set of JSON schema files. In order to apply these schemas during validation, EGA utilizes the ELIXIR Biovalidator, ensuring adherence to community standards and best practices. This poster presents the  advantages of Biovalidator-based validation in combination with EGA's improved metadata model . We showcase the ease of maintenance of the schemas through custom rules based on ontology terms, and discuss EGA's infrastructure in development for metadata validation, including a pre-submission toolkit and public servers for remote validation. Soon, the improved metadata model and Biovalidator will be adopted into EGA's production services, enhancing the metadata FAIRness, while also benefiting the Federated EGA (FEGA) initiative, by providing to emerging nodes an out-of-the-box workflow for metadata validation. The EGA aims to establish a process for constant review and incorporation of feedback into its model through collaboration with ELIXIR Human Data Communities.