Semantic Data Management Maturity Survey Report

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The first results are in!

In September of 2025, Semantic Materials launched their Semantic Data Management Maturity Assessment Service. Part of this service includes a self-assessment survey that enables materials and manufacturing businesses to investigate strengths and weaknesses and alignment with business goals when it comes to implementing effective semantic data and knowledge management systems.

This initial report appraises the results received so far. The results show that current maturity levels are relatively low, with fragmented data management preventing efficient collaboration. And although staff are often aware of the need for more efficient data integration, a lack of standardised workflows may be hindering progress.

The survey provides insights into the key issues of knowledge management:

  • Data
  • Processes
  • People
  • Tools and technologies

To take the survey for yourself and learn more, the service is free to access here – Semantic Data Management Maturity Assessment Service.

Semantic Data Management Maturity Survey – Initial Results Analysis

was written byVikki Cantrill and Gerhard Goldbeck.

MaturityServiceResults_report_FINAL

A version of record of this report is available here.

Acknowledgement

This study has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no. 862136 (OntoTrans) and the Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement no. 101137725 (BatCAT), and from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee [grant number 10091190].

 

 

Metadata for cataloguing datasets from materials science and related domains

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There are vast amounts of data available within materials science and only a fraction of these are published. Such data can come from research and development or manufacturing and span experimental data, simulations and may be from diverse laboratories. Indeed, much data is often lost or inaccessible because the metadata is often lacking and inconsistent, and experimental protocols can vary.

[We have written about the importance data catalogues in materials science previously over on our Semantic Materials site]

To help address these concerns, a considerable body of work has been undertaken by the RDA Working Group “Harmonised terminologies and schemas for FAIR data in materials science and related domains” supported by RDA TIGER and RDA Europe. This work has identified a set of strategies to improve the FAIR maturity of materials data, for example, regarding the need to have “Rich metadata… to allow discovery”.

A primary outcome from this work has been a report that, with a global perspective, reviews the state of the art, with a particular focus on the current two most used frameworks, DCAT and Schema.org, and the use of metadata for materials data cataloguing in general.

The report looks at how scientists organise and describe materials science datasets so they can be easily found, shared, and reused. It provides an overview of international efforts in the US, Europe, Japan, and Korea to create common standards for metadata and outlines some implementation cases. The report also highlights successes, gaps, and recommendations for harmonising metadata and how this could be achieved across countries and disciplines in the future.

Metadata for cataloguing datasets from materials science and related domains

was written by Otello Roscioni and Gerhard Goldbeck.

Metadata for cataloguing datasets from materials science and related domains-1

A version of record of this report is available here.

Acknowledgement

The work described here and the report has received funding from the RDA TIGER and RDA Europe and from European Commission under the European Union’s Horizon Research and Innovation programme, GA No. 101137725 (BatCAT), and by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee, GA no 10091190 (BatCAT).

 

 

An overview of 2025!

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Another busy year at Goldbeck Consulting during 2025, so here we take a moment to reflect on the highlights from the last 12 months. Our sincere thanks go out to our clients, partners and collaborators, and we look forward to what 2026 will bring!

We successfully completed two EU-funded projects early in the year, OpenModel and nanoMECommons, and we are just over half-way through one of our other projects, BatCAT, for which we just completed the alignment of ontologies with the EMMO.

This year also saw the successful launch of Semantic Materials — the semantic technologies branch of Goldbeck Consulting Ltd. Semantic Materials brings together a team of experts and partner organisations in Europe to support clients in chemicals and materials industries in building science-based, data-centric knowledge management systems.

As part of the Semantic Materials initiative, we also announced a new, working collaborative agreement with Semantic Partners, known for their technology stack expertise. We look forward to continuing work with them throughout 2026.

And, we developed our Semantic Data Management Maturity Assessment Service, a self-assessment tool to give you insight into the key issues of knowledge management.

 

Our work has enabled us to take part in several events, like

Cecam’s Workshop on Interfacial Properties: Open Questions

EMMC 2025 International Workshop

PSDI Materials Community Workshop

FEMS EUROMAT 2025

The Harmonised terminologies and schemas for FAIR data in materials science and related domains WG workshop – “Data Cataloguing for Materials Science and related domains”.

RDA 25th Plenary Meeting

Semantic Materials Workshop 2025

 

Alongside the events attended, there have been numerous presentations and posters:

Managing the complexity of multiscale modelling with semantic technologies by Otello Roscioni.

Knowledge representation of battery manufacturing supported by an integrated ontology system by Gerhard Goldbeck, Silvia Chiacchiera, Martin Petit and Martin T. Horsch.

Materials knowledge and data representation with a European ontology ecosystem by Gerhard Goldbeck

EMMO Ontology: enabling AI-based innovative advanced materials development: the CoBRAIN Knowledge Base for hardmetal thermal spraying coatings by Gerhard Goldbeck and Emanuele Ghedini

EMMO: an ontology based on universal materials science concepts by Gerhard Goldbeck

 

Publications have also been key to our work this year:

Application of the CHADA Workflow (CWA 17815:2025) for High-Speed Nanoindentation Mapping on Battery Cathodes by Daniele Duranti et al.

Training for the new CHADA was published.

Published paper Easy-MODA: Simplifying standardised registration of scientific simulation workflows through MODA template guidelines powered by the Enalos Cloud Platform Iseult Lynch, Antreas Afantitis et al. This publication supports the use of Easy-MODA – a free web tool for researchers to document and register complex modelling workflows.

Knowledge organisation and intelligent R&D for chemicals and materials industries – A workshop report by Gerhard Goldbeck, Vikki Cantrill, Ferry Kienberger, and Alexandra Simperler

 

Finally, our semantic technologies work has led to an approved CEN workshop agreement and the release of two ontology versions:

A new CEN Workshop Agreement on Materials characterization – Terminology and structured documentation has been published. This new agreement provides a standardised framework, called the CHAracterisation DAta (CHADA) model that documents materials characterization processes in a structured and consistent manner.

Released Characterisation Methodology Domain Ontology (CHAMEO) v1.0 for characterisation terminology and metadata.

Released the Elementary Multiperspective Material Ontology (EMMO) v1.0 as a standard representational framework for the materials and manufacturing sectors in collaboration by many within the EMMC community.

Overall, a great year and we are looking forward to 2026!

 

OpenModel project logo
EMMC logo

 

RDA 25th Plenary Meeting

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This morning, Gerhard participated online in a session of the RDA 25th Plenary Meeting, which formed part of International Data Week 2025 (13–16 October) that is running currently in Brisbane, Australia.

This event marked the final meeting of the Harmonised terminologies and schemas for FAIR data in materials science and related domains Working Group that Gerhard has been co-chairing. A number of topics were covered, including a short summary of work made possible by the generous funding from the RDA TIGER support scheme. The Working Group will now work to finalise its report that will include recommendations for field guides for increasing the FAIR maturity of data as well as semantic artefacts in materials science communities.

 

Acknowledgement

This work has received funding from European Commission under the European Union’s Horizon Research and Innovation programme, GA No. 101137725 (BatCAT), and by the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) under the UK government’s Horizon Europe funding guarantee, GA No. 10091190 (BatCAT).

 

Data Cataloguing for Materials Science

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We are pleased to let you know about a workshop organised by the Harmonised terminologies and schemas for FAIR data in materials science and related domains WG entitled: “Data Cataloguing for Materials Science and related domains”.

The meeting will take place, online, on Wednesday 24 September 2025, 11.30am–1.30pm UTC and will be supported by RDA TIGER and RDA Europe.

As mentioned on the meeting website, the workshop aims to identify a set of strategies to improve the FAIR maturity of materials data, for example, regarding indicator RDA-F2-01M: “Rich metadata is provided to allow discovery”.  There is a need to adopt high-level metadata/schemas such as DCAT and Schema.org, agree on Application Profile(s) based on domain requirements and establish standardised vocabularies to support harmonised applications.

The European Data Portal is a metadata catalogue based on the DCAT Application Profile. The meeting aims to identify what can be learnt from these and other initiatives, and what are the barriers to overcome?

The meeting will involve both short talks and discussions.

Confirmed speakers for the event include:

For full and up-to-date information about the event including joining instructions, visit the post on the working group’s website.

 

Event announcement: Semantic Materials Workshop 2025

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Semantic Materials Workshop 2025

Knowledge Organisation Challenges and Solutions for Chemicals and Materials-Based Industries

Monday 10 November 2025

Homerton College, Cambridge, UK

 

Save the date!

We’re excited to announce that, following our very popular event last year, the Semantic Materials Workshop will be returning for 2025.

This year’s event will provide a unique opportunity to discuss pertinent topics in knowledge organisation and information integration with subject-matter peers that understand the particular challenges of chemicals and materials domains. A chance to learn from each other’s experiences and discuss with leading academic developers and commercial solutions providers about strategies and next steps in implementation.

This workshop will include a full day of presentations and discussions on the topic of Knowledge Organisation Challenges and Solutions for Chemicals and Materials-Based Industries.

Confirmed speakers include:

Please note:

Attendance at the workshop will be by invitation in the first instance. To make the most of the day, attendance in person is recommended.

We will be releasing full details of the event in early autumn on the Semantic Materials website and through LinkedIn, so be sure to follow. If you are interested in attending, you can register your interest by email.

Acknowledgement:

This event is kindly supported by the DigiCell project and the EMMC.

 

Announcing Semantic Materials

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We are delighted to announce the launch of Semantic Materials, a new venture that delivers science- and analytics-based knowledge organisation systems to industrial and research communities across Europe.

Semantic Materials forms the semantic technologies branch of Goldbeck Consulting that brings together experts in science and engineering, and analytic philosophy to design and develop ontologies for research and innovation.

This venture is the culmination of several projects that we have been involved with. It incorporates the Elementary Multiperspective Material Ontology (EMMO) along with many tools and developments from several EU funded projects: OntoTrans, OpenModel, NanoMECommons and BatCAT.

Learn more about Semantic Materials or get in touch with us or the Semantic Materials team directly.

A look back over 2024!

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It has been a busy 2024 here at Goldbeck Consulting. Thanks to all of the support from you — our clients, partners and collaborators! We look forward to many more highlights in the coming year as well.

We have had the privilege to be involved with number of EU projects. Two of these projects have now successfully completed OntoTrans and DOME 4.0. We look forward to continuing work next year as part of the OpenModel and nanoMECommons projects. We have also enjoyed getting to know all of the partners within our new project this year, BatCAT.

We participated in lots of events throughout Europe, including NMBP-35 workshop, BIG-MAP EUnified Battery Data Space Workshop, BatCAT consortium kick-off and M12 meetings, OntoTrans consortium M48 final meeting, Knowledge Graph Alliance’s (KGA) 1st KG-AI summit, Materials Week 2024, CEN Workshop, 7th Semantics@Roche, Nanotexnology 2024 International Conferences & Exhibition on Nanotechnologies, Organic Electronics & Nanomedicine, Semantics 2024, OpenModel Exploitation Workshop, International Materials Science and Engineering Congress, CONNECT-NM kick-off and the NanoMECommons Workshop on materials characterisation, data standardisation and digitalisation. Gerhard also gave an online talk with Materials Square.

We also hosted our own Semantic Materials workshop in London. It was a great meeting and we hope to run a follow up event soon.

And we have published a number of publications and reports with our partners and collaborators: 

Developing ontologies in Materials Science

OntoTrans project press release and final video

Social Media – the art nouveau of communicating research projects to citizens?

Semantic Knowledge Management for materials: the benefits of a FAIR data and model-based approach in industrial research and development

Battery testing ontology: An EMMO-based semantic framework for representing knowledge in battery testing and battery quality control

Elementary Multiperspective Material Ontology: Leveraging perspectives via a showcase of EMMO-based domain and application ontologies

Operationalising materials modelling workflows in industrial R&D – a benefits analysis

Overall, a great year and looking forward to the next one! Our very best wishes to all our partners and clients for a prosperous New Year.

 

OpenModel project logo

Operationalising materials modelling workflows in industrial R&D

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Operationalising materials modelling workflows in industrial R&D – a benefits analysis

 

To round off 2024, Goldbeck Consulting, along with colleagues from SINTEF and the University of Bologna, have published a white paper that discusses the importance of materials modelling workflows within enterprises.

The article delves into the benefits, challenges and practicalities of implementing a semantic interoperability platform. These platforms integrate materials modelling more deeply into the enterprise, improves its efficiency and supports collaboration. The paper has been published as part of the OpenModel project.

Within materials science and manufacturing, the use of semantic technologies is expected to be a key priority over the next 5–10 years as industries become increasingly reliant on data-driven decision-making, innovation, and sustainability practices. So, this article, highlights how semantic technologies are transforming materials science innovation.

Operationalising materials modelling workflows in industrial R&D – a benefits analysis

was written by Francesca L. Bleken, Michele Brigadoi, Alessandro Calvio, Vikki Cantrill, Jesper Friis, Gerhard Goldbeck and Otello Maria Roscioni.

OpenModel-White-paper-Final

Or to view the paper, click here.

A version of record of this work is available here.

 

Acknowledgement: This work has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under Grant Agreement No 953167 (OpenModel)

 

Sign up for Gerhard’s webinar hosted by Materials Square

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On 30 April at 1–2 pm (BST), Gerhard will be presenting this month’s webinar hosted by Materials Square.

The presentation, entitled “How is materials modeling working for the industry?”, will discuss the role of and challenges for materials modeling in supporting the industry in its quest to respond to complex challenges, such as increased sustainability and digitalization.

Although materials modeling combines well with powerful data-driven techniques, its full potential is not always understood throughout organisations. So, the focus will be on market trends and the need for integration of materials modeling in digitalisation initiatives.

The Materials Square webinar series is free to attend – Register here to reserve your place

Materials Square is a web-based materials simulation platform for research and development managed by Virtual Lab Inc. based in Seoul, South Korea.