Reflections on Research Data Service Discoverability

Research data services are hard to define, which makes it hard to build a unified discovery service that covers all of them. This presentation recommends taking a user-focused approach: the discovery service should be built around what a researcher would want to look for, rather than an abstract idea of what makes a service a research data service. The service should also use as simple a solution as possible: the Organisational Profile Document model, as used by the Equipment.data discovery service, is an example of a simple but effective approach.