CSVW for energy datasets

This page collects examples of improving the FAIRness of datasets using the csv extension csvw. Most importantly, csv on the web offers a possibility to tie together metadata and data, starting from a well-known and widely used data format. The standard offers a rich framework to annotate existing csv documents with additional information and transform them into other forms of structured data exchange formats such as JSON(-ld) and RDF. At the same time, csv on the web is user-friendly offering a flexible mechanism from minimal FAIR extensions to elaborated context building for the data to be shared. CSV on the web is a W3C recommendation in coherence with ...

Name	status	year of foundation	national identifier	Street address	city	postal code	C/O	lat	lon	website	Activity	National industrial sector classification (if no other information on area of activity available)	Purpose (original language)	Purpose (translation)	country code	Legal Form
Kvarkenvinden 1	active	1998-01-27	769602-8096	Norra Obbolavägen 89	Umeå	904 22		63.80667	20.27364	http://kvarkenvinden.se	wind onshore	35110	Föreningen har till ändamål att främja sina medlemmars ekonomiska intressen och dess miljöintresse genom att utöva driftsansvar över vindkraftverk i syfte att tillhandahålla vindenergi för medlemmarnas konsumtion. All genom föreningen genererad vindenergi ägs av medlemmarna.	The purpose of the association is to promote the financial interests of its members and its environmental interests by exercising operational responsibility for wind turbines in order to provide wind energy for the members' consumption. All wind energy generated by the association is owned by the members.	SWE	C61P
Ollebacken vind ekonomiska förening	active	2008-01-08	769618-1010	SIKÅS NORRA BYVÄGEN 180	Hammerdal	833 49		63.67432	15.06297	https://www.ollebackenvind.se	wind onshore	35110	Föreningen har till ändamål att främja medlemmarans ekonomiska intressen genom att i egen regi producera miljö vänlig energi.	The purpose of the association is to promote the members' financial interests by producing environmentally friendly energy on their own.	SWE	C61P
Jamtkulingen ekonomiska förening	active	2009-01-20	769619-7420	Södra Strandvägen 19 A	Frösön	832 44	Sven Erik Eriksson	63.17622	14.61152	http://www.jamtkulingen.se/	wind onshore	35110	Föreningen har till ändamål att främja medlemmarnas ekonomiska intressen genom att i egen regi producera miljövänlig energi.	The purpose of the association is to promote the members' financial interests by producing environmentally friendly energy on their own.	SWE	C61P
Hällingarna Vind	active	2005-08-02	769612-8318	OLLEBACKEN 130	Hammerdal	833 49		63.59838	15.05107		wind onshore	35110	Föreningen har till ändamål att främja medlemmarnas ekonomiska intressen genom att i egen regi producera miljövänlig engeri. Medlemmarna deltar i verksamheten som konsumenter.	The purpose of the association is to promote the members' financial interests by producing environmentally friendly areas on their own. The members participate in the business as consumers.	SWE	C61P
Offerdalsvind Ekonomiska förening	active	2000-08-31	769606-0719	BERGE 718,	Offerdal	835 97		63.46154	14.09483	http://www.offerdalsvind.se	wind onshore	35110	Föreningen har till ändamål att främja medlemmarnas ekonomiska intressen genom att i egen regi producera miljövänlig energi. Medlemmarna deltar i verksamheten som konsumenter.	The purpose of the association is to promote the members' financial interests by producing environmentally friendly areas on their own. The members participate in the business as consumers.	SWE	C61P
Trärike vindkraft ekonomisk förening	liquidation	1996-08-07	769601-6331	VIKINGAVÄGEN 36	Sundsvall	857 41		62.40317	17.26335	http://www.trarikevindkraft.se/index.htm	wind onshore	35110	Föreningen har till ändamål att främja medlemmarnas ekonomiska intresse genom att förse medlemmarna med egen vindkraft- producerad el och även främja medlemmarnas miljöintresse och vindkraftens utveckling. Föreningen skall bygga upp ett kapital som säkrar uppbyggnad, drift, underhåll och demontering av föreningens vindkraftverk.	The purpose of the association is to promote the members 'financial interest by providing the members with their own wind-powered electricity and also promoting the members' environmental interest and the development of wind power. The association will build up a capital that ensures the construction, operation, maintenance and dismantling of the association's wind turbines.	SWE	C61P
Dala Vindkraft Ekonomisk förening	active	2006-02-18	769613-8911	RIKSVÄGEN 15	Rättvik	795 32		60.88933	15.11092	http://dalavind.se/vindandelar-foreningar/dala-vindkraft-ekonomisk-forening/medlemsinformation	wind onshore, E-trade	35110	Föreningen har till ändamål att främja medlemmarnas ekonomiska intressen, samt deras miljöintresse, genom att tillhandahålla medlemmarna egen vindkraftsproducerad elkraft.	The purpose of the association is to promote the members' financial interests, as well as their environmental interests, by providing the members with their own wind-powered electricity.	SWE	C61P
Vindela	active	2004-08-17	769611-2411	BOX 4	Malung	782 21		60.6834	13.71603	http://dalavind.se/vindandelar-foreningar/vindela/	wind onshore	35110	Föreningen har till ändamål att främja medlemmarnas ekonomiska intressen genom att i egen regi producera miljövänlig elkraft.	The purpose of the association is to promote the members' financial interests by producing environmentally friendly electricity on their own.	SWE	C61P
Äppelbovind	active	2000-09-25	769606-1485	BOX 4	Malung	782 21		60.6834	13.71603	http://dalavind.se/vindandelar-foreningar/appelbovind/kontakt/	wind onshore	35110	Föreningen har till ändamål att främja medlemmarnas ekonomiska intressen genom att i egen regi producera miljövänlig elkraft.	The purpose of the association is to promote the members' financial interests by producing environmentally friendly electricity on their own.	SWE	C61P
Fjällbergsvind ekonomisk förening	liquidation	2005-09-13	769613-0587	Djupuddsvägen 35	Grängesberg	772 40		60.08136	14.98449	http://dalavind.se/vindandelar-foreningar/fjallbergs-vind-ekonomiskforening	wind onshore	35110	Föreningen har till ändamål att främja medlemmarnas ekonomiska intressen genom att tillhandahålla medlemmarna egen vindkrafts- producerad elkraft.	The purpose of the association is to promote the members' financial interests by providing the members with their own wind power produced electricity.	SWE	C61P
Kyrkvinden ekonomiska förening	active	2005-05-09	769613-0025	GIMOGATAN 6 B 3TR	Uppsala	752 20		59.8687	17.6083	https://www.kyrkvinden.se	wind onshore	35110	Föreningen har till ändamål att främja medlemmarnas ekonomiska intressen genom att förmedla och i egen regi eller genom samarbetspartner producera miljövänlig elkraft.	The purpose of the association is to promote the members' financial interests by conveying, on their own account or through partners, environmentally friendly electricity	SWE	C61P
Ljusterö Vind ekonomiska förening	active	2008-04-02	769618-5961	LJUSTERÖ TORG	Ljusterö	184 95		59.52403	18.60869	http://www.ljusterovind.se/	wind onshore	35110	Föreningen har till ändamål att främja medlemmarnas ekonomiska intressen genom att i egen regi producera miljövänlig energi samt annan därmed förenlig verksamhet. Medlemmarna deltar i verksamheten som konsumenter.	The purpose of the association is to promote the members' financial interests by producing environmentally friendly energy and other related activities on their own behalf. The members participate in the business as consumers.	SWE	C61P
Windy ekonomisk förening	active	2000-12-11	769606-4802	SVARTEDALSBACKEN 9	Lerum	443 39	Mattias Skjöldebrandt	57.76418	12.26767	http://windy-vindkraft.se/	wind onshore	35110	Föreningen har till ändamål att främja medlemmarna ekonomiska intressen genom att tillhandahålla medlemmarna egen vindkraft- producerad el, därigenom också främjande medlemmarnas intresse för miljö och energihushållning samt bedriva därmed förenlig verksamhet.	The purpose of the association is to promote the members 'financial interests by providing the members with their own electricity produced by wind power, thereby also promoting the members' interest in the environment and energy management, and conducting compatible activities therewith.	SWE	C61P

The csv file contains information on the name of the initiatives, its legal status, its year of foundation, its national identifier, its street address, the city it is located in, the corresponding postal code, a possible C/O information, a latitude geo-information of the location (lat), a longitude geo-information of the location (lon), the website of the initiatives, some information for activities, a national industrial sector classification, a purpose statement in original language, the same purpose statement translated to English, the date of removal, the country code, and its legal form. To relate metadata information to this information in the csv file, we create a second file containing this metadata. The file format for this metadata information file is json. Let us assume that the csv file itself has the filename "SWE_initiatives_sample.csv". According to the csv on the web standard, the metadata file should have the filename "SWE_initiatives_sample.csv-metadata.json". A minimal form of the metadata file contains the following information

  {
     "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/csvw",
     "url": "SWE_initiatives_sample.csv"
  }

The @context information links to the language conventions of the csvw standard, the url information states the filename of the csv file. This minimal file can be extended to contain more specific metadata. All entries are encoded in the form of property specifications and corresponding values.

General information about the csv file

In a first step, we include general information about the csv file. We start with a code snippet for specifics such as title, description, and creator

   {
    "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/csvw",
    "url": "SWE_initiatives_sample.csv"
    "dc:title": "Example - list of citizen-led initiatives in Sweden",
    "dc:description": "List of citizen-led initiatives in Sweden, example dataset to be used for illustrating the use of csv on the web",
    "dc:creator": {
	"schema:name": "August Wierling",
	"schema:url": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7443-7593",
	"schema:contactPoint": { "email": "augustw@hvl.no}
    }

As in the example above, property specifications can be terms from popular metadata vocabularies. E.g. the Dublin Core, schema.org, or DCAT vocabulary can be used. All of these vocabularies can be used independently or together. In the above example, metadata terms from the Dublin core vocabulary are mixed with terms from schema.org. The title of the csv file, and its description are stated using the Dublin core terms. The information inside of the dc:creator term contains information which in turn is specified using the schema.org vocabulary. Information about the creator is given in more detail specifying a human-readable name of the creator, a url of the creator (here: his orcid number), and contact point details such as the email. The contact point information can be extended using also a telephone or a fax number. We continue with a more extensive list of details about the file as a whole

    "@context": "http://www.w3.org/ns/csvw",
    "url": "SWE_initiatives_sample.csv",
    "dc:title": "Example - list of citizen-led initiatives in Sweden",
    "dc:description": "List of citizen-led initiatives in Sweden, example dataset to be used for illustrating the use of csv on the web",
    "dc:date": "2022-10-07",
    "dc:format": "text/csv",
    "dc:language": "en-US",
    "dc:publisher": {
	"schema:name": "EERAdata project",
	"schema:url": "https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/883823",
	"schema:contactPoint": {
	    "email": "info@eeradata.eu",
	    "url": "https://www.eeradata.eu"
	}
    }	
    "dc:rights": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/",
    "dc:subject": "Energy communities, Sweden, Community energy, Energy cooperatives, Renewable Energy",
    "dc:source": {
	"schema:name": "ENBP Inventory \"Energy by people\" - First Europe-wide inventory on energy communities",
	"schema:url": "https://doi.org/10.18710/2CPQHQ"
    }, 	
    "dc:type": "dataset",
    "dc:creator": {
	"schema:name": "August Wierling",
	"schema:url": "https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7443-7593",
	"schema:contactPoint": { "email": "augustw@hvl.no}
    },
    "dc:coverage": "Sweden",
    "dc:identifier": "https://eeradata-platform.eu/"

The date follows ISO 8601. The language is specified following RFC 4646. For the media type, RFC 7111 has being used as a specification. The type is taken according to the DCMI type vocabulary. The dc:publisher information has several details which are grouped into one object by curly brackets: the EERAdata project as the name of the publisher, the corresponding CORDIS entry as a persistent identifier, and contact information in form of an email and a website. The entry for dc:rights contains the license information and points to a website provided by the creative commons organization. It states that the csv file is licensed under Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). As such, anybody is free to share and adapt the file. The dc:subject contains a list of keywords describing the contents of the csv file in more details. The subject information should be more extensive in a real example. Here, only a basic example is given. The dc:type information declares the csv file information as a dataset according to the possible types listed by the DCMI type element working draft. The dc:identifier holds as DCMI describes it an unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context. Ideally, the resource is the final FAIRified object. Thus, it does apply to the json file created out of the original csv file and its json metadata document. Best practice is to assign a persistent identifier.

Now, how does this contribute to make the original csv FAIR fair ?

Specifying information about table headers

This section describes how to specify further the entries in the various columns of the csv file. Note that the csv on the web standard allow to connect the metadata file in json to several csv files which share certain layout. For our puroposes here, we focus on a single table - the one illustrated above with the information on Swedish energy coooperatives. Before describing a full-fletched description for all the columns, we start with the first four columns from the left specifying the name of the initiative, its legal status, the year of foundation, and a national identifier. We start with a simple set of specifications before assigning more information to the columns. For more information, please also see the primer as well as the recommendation itself.

    "tableSchema": {
	"columns": [{
	    "titles": "Name",
            "dc:description": "Name of the initiative",
            "datatype": "string",
            "required": true
        },{
	    "titles": "Status",
            "dc:description": "Legal status",
            "datatype": {
                "base": "string",
                "format": "active|inactive|liquidation"
            },
            "required": true
        },{
	    "titles": "Year of foundation",
            "dc:description": "Year of foundation of the initiative",
            "datatype": "date"
        },{
	    "titles": "National identifier",
            "datatype": {
               "dc:title": "National identifier for Sweden",
               "dc:description": "National identifier for Sweden",
               "base": "string",
               "format": "\d{6}-\d{4}"
        }

The general property for specific table attributes is tableSchema. Details on the columns is specified by columns. Per column, a title, a description and details about the datatype are fixed. For example, the first column has the title name and the dc:description entry gives further information on what name actually means. The datatype for all entries in the first column is string. For possible further pre-defined datatypes, see the Metadata Vocabulary for Tabular Data. The specification of true for required leads to an error message if the corresponding entry in the csv file is empty. In the entry for the second column, the format properties list allowed entries for the values in the second column. If there is any entry other than active, inactive or liquidation, an error will be reported.