Community based Data Interoperability Networks | Apply Online

Opportunity Summary:

The National Science Foundation (NSF) Community-based Data Interoperability Networks opportunity (Funding Opportunity Number 07-565) was designed to strengthen how research and education communities share, discover, and reuse digital data across many disciplines. NSF emphasizes that modern data are not only end products of research, but also raw material for new studies, teaching, and innovation. A central challenge is that data created for one purpose often become far more valuable when they can be combined with other datasets or used in ways the original creators never anticipated. That kind of reuse depends on interoperability, meaning different systems can exchange information and also correctly interpret and apply what they receive. In practical terms, interoperability is what allows people to find datasets, understand what they mean, and integrate them across tools, institutions, and fields without constantly rebuilding custom translations.

This program is crosscutting, meaning it spans and serves multiple NSF directorates and research areas rather than belonging to a single discipline. The core goal is to support community-led efforts that build broad interoperability by developing shared mechanisms such as strong data and metadata conventions, ontologies, and taxonomies. In other words, the program prioritizes the shared "language" and structure that make data comparable and machine-readable across communities, including agreed-upon metadata elements, common vocabularies, and formal conceptual models for describing entities and relationships. By focusing on community-based approaches, NSF is signaling that interoperability works best when standards are not imposed from the top down, but instead emerge from sustained consensus among the researchers, data managers, software developers, and domain experts who will actually use them.

Funded projects were expected to form or operate as Data Interoperability Networks. These networks are positioned as both conveners and builders. On the convening side, they are responsible for consensus-building activities that bring stakeholders together to agree on shared definitions, requirements, and priorities. Examples mentioned in the announcement include community workshops, online resources like community interaction sites, and task groups focused on specific interoperability problems. On the building side, these networks also need the technical expertise to translate that consensus into usable outcomes: technical standards along with practical implementation tools and resources. The solicitation highlights activities such as information science work, software development, and the design and implementation of ontologies and taxonomies, which implies NSF wanted deliverables that move beyond discussion into operational, adoptable infrastructure.

Administratively, this was a discretionary grant program under the NSF, categorized within science and technology and other research and development. The opportunity anticipated around 10 awards, with an estimated total funding level of $250,000. There was no cost sharing or matching requirement stated. Eligibility was described as unrestricted, meaning it was open to a broad range of applicant types, subject to any clarifications in the full program text (NSF Publication 07-565). Because the program is crosscutting, it aligns with a wide range of NSF CFDA program areas, including Engineering (47.041), Mathematical and Physical Sciences (47.049), Computer and Information Science and Engineering (47.070), Biological Sciences (47.074), Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences (47.075), Education and Human Resources (47.076), Polar Programs (47.078), the Office of International Science and Engineering (47.079), and the Office of Cyberinfrastructure (47.080). That breadth reflects the reality that interoperability challenges and standards development are needed everywhere, from lab science to social science to education and international collaborations.

In terms of timing, the solicitation was originally posted on May 23, 2007, with an original closing date of August 23, 2007. It later listed full proposal target dates of July 23, 2008 and July 23 annually thereafter through 2009, but it also includes an important note that NSF would not accept proposals for the July 23, 2008 deadline due to a lack of funding. The current closing date in the provided record is July 23, 2009. For applicants seeking the full announcement details, the listing references NSF Publication 07-565 and provides contact guidance through grants.gov support (grantsgovsupport@nsf.gov) for access or technical issues.

Overall, the opportunity can be summarized as NSF support for discipline-spanning, community-driven networks that (1) organize the people and processes needed to reach agreement on shared data and metadata approaches, and (2) convert those agreements into concrete standards, software, and knowledge organization systems that make it easier to find, interpret, and reuse data across systems and scientific domains. The intended long-term payoff is a research ecosystem where data can move more freely and meaningfully between projects, tools, and communities, accelerating discovery and improving the efficiency and impact of research and education.

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