Speaker
Description
The International Solar-Terrestrial Physics (ISTP) Metadata Guidelines for definitive description of data in the self-describing scientific data formats, such as CDF and netCDF in Heliophysics, were originally developed at NASA Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF) as part of the ISTP science initiative for use by the Polar, Wind, Geotail and Cluster missions in the early 1990’s. The Guidelines were later adopted by the Interagency Consultative Group (IACG) for Space Science, and they are now used by most of the major heliophysics missions, including MMS, Van Allen Probes, Parker Solar Probe, Solar Orbiter and IMAP, and supported by numerous display and analysis tools, including CDAWeb, Autoplot, SpacePy and PySPEDAS/SPEDAS. The ISTP Metadata Guidelines are maintained openly in a publicly accessible, version-controlled GitHub repository (https://github.com/IHDE-Alliance/ISTP_metadata) that allows for contributions and engagement from the community. The baseline version 1.0.0 has also been published on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20790266). Though the ISTP Metadata Guidelines proved to be critical in enabling collaborative research in Heliophysics in the past 30 years, they are not always sufficient for definitive description of complex data from modern advanced instruments. They also do not provide adequate support for FAIR (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) principles. To enable the Guidelines future development, we have established the ISTP Metadata Guidelines Steering Committee made of experts in the field with extensive experience of using the ISTP metadata, including representatives/developers of systems/tools supporting the ISTP metadata, with all development proposals publicly discussed on GitHub. We are presenting the ISTP Metadata Guidelines current status and prioritized future development steps, and we welcome feedback from the wide community.