Who We Are
About us
Semantify helps research organizations, repositories, and funders design metadata and PID systems that interoperate — and make sure they get adopted. Sara El-Gebali brings semantic architecture from EMBO, EMBL-EBI, SciLifeLab and DataCite. Xiaoli Chen brings programme leadership from CERN, DataCite, FORCE11 and RDA. We work remotely, globally.
Semantic infrastructure architect with hands-on production curation experience at EMBL-EBI (Pfam / InterPro), now a DataCite Metadata Specialist driving FAIR Digital Object work and Bioschemas / DataCite schema harmonisation.
Current
- —Metadata Specialist, DataCite (2023–present)
- —Steering Committee, FAIR Digital Objects Forum
- —Co-founder, FAIRPoints; founder, OpenCIDER
- —RDA / EOSC Future Life Sciences Ambassador
- —Governance Committee, Open Life Science
Past
- —Project Leader, Metadata & Curation — SciLifeLab Data Centre / DDLS
- —Head of Research Data Management — MDC Berlin
- —Scientific Database Curator — EMBL-EBI (Pfam, InterPro)
- —Scientific Data Editor — EMBO (SourceData)
- —PhD Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, University of Bern; MSc Queen Mary University of London; BSc Lund
Training & advocacy
- —Open Data module lead — NASA TOPS Open Science 101
- —Carpentries certified instructor
- —Keynote, BOSC 2023; speaker, FOSDEM 2023
- —Featured: FAIRDataPodcast, RSEng Dev Stories
Recognition
- —Wellcome Genome Campus Award for Best Practice in Equality and Diversity (2019)
- —eLife Innovation Leaders 2020 mentee
Representative publications
- —The Pfam protein families database in 2019 — Nucleic Acids Research
- —InterPro in 2019 / 2017 — Nucleic Acids Research
- —SourceData: a semantic platform for curating and searching figures — Nature Methods
- —Ten simple rules for pushing boundaries of inclusion at academic events — PLOS Comp. Biol., 2024
- —Harmonizing Metadata Across Disciplines — Bioschemas and the DataCite Metadata Schema — DataCite blog, 2024
Technical depth
Research infrastructure strategist who leads DataCite's Templeton-funded FAIR Workflows programme across seven international partners, with a research career rooted in user studies of CERN's open-data and analysis-preservation services.
Current
- —FAIR Workflows Project Lead, DataCite (Templeton WCF-funded, 3 years, 7 partners, 38 outputs)
- —Co-chair, RDA “Working with PIDs in Tools” Interest Group
Past
- —Co-chair, DataCite APAC Expert Group
- —Doctoral researcher / data-management collaborator at CERN Scientific Information Service — communications and engagement lead on the EC THOR PID project; user research and information architecture on the CERN Open Data Portal and CERN Analysis Preservation
- —DataCite schema contributor — Award and Preregistration resource types; CSTR as alternative PID
- —FORCE11 summer school instructor (PIDs, RDM)
- —PhD Information Studies, University of Sheffield iSchool (data reuse practices among high-energy physicists, based at CERN); MS, Syracuse iSchool; BA, Beijing Institute of Clothing Technology
Representative publications
- —Chen, X., Dallmeier-Tiessen, S. et al. Open is not enough. Nature Physics 15, 113–119 (2019)
- —Chen, X., Dallmeier-Tiessen, S. et al. CERN Analysis Preservation: A Novel Digital Library Service. TPDL 2016
- —Guide for funders to support FAIR workflows & enable research tracking. Zenodo, 2023 (DataCite × Crossref × ORCID)
- —The Role of Funders in Building a Robust and Trustworthy Output Tracking Mechanism Using PIDs and Open Metadata. Zenodo, 2023
Methods depth