The time is now! Vertical interoperability between research tools: an essential enabler for the FAIRification of data

"This post focuses on interoperability between research tools. Thus far this topic has been primarily explored through looking at interoperability between different tools which fall into the same tool category.  The most prominent examples are generalist data repositories and data management planning tools.  Some work has also been done in the electronic lab notebook interoperability sphere. After a brief summary of these three examples of ‘horizontal’ interoperability, we explore an important emerging area of interest which we call ‘vertical’ interoperability: interoperability between tools that belong to different tool categories.  This post builds on work done as part of an NSF grant [6] we are carrying out in collaboration with the California Digital Library, and a presentation and discussion of vertical interoperability at the annual meeting of the Generalist Repository Ecosystem Initiative (GREI) project which took place in Chicago in September 2024 [7]...."