Speaker
Description
The NAPMIX project aims to establish a cross-domain FAIR-compliant metadata schema for the Nuclear, Astro, and Particle (NAP) physics communities. A core challenge is reconciling the evolving nature of experimental metadata, enriched progressively from proposal through analysis, with the immutability required by Persistent Identifiers (DOIs) for findability and interoperability. This contribution presents the NAPMIX's architectural strategy for resolving this “Paradox of Persistence”: the tension between dynamic metadata and immutable DOIs.
Inspired by GANIL's DOI workflow, we evaluate two integration patterns widely discussed in the FAIR community: (A) Serialization, embedding NAPMIX metadata into standard DataCite fields; and (B) Decoupling, issuing separate DOIs for the metadata objects. To address their limitations, NAPMIX implements a "Live Metadata Layer" via a Django-based service.
This system distinguishes Static Infrastructure Metadata (e.g. accelerator configurations) from Dynamic Experimental Parameters (e.g., reaction kinematics), enabling granular versioning. Dataset DOIs reference immutable metadata snapshots, while the NAPMIX backend maintains an evolving canonical record tracked via stable Property IDs.
Finally, we outline the integration path with community catalogues such as OpenNP and SciCat, illustrating how versioned metadata objects can interconnect Digital Research Products across repositories . This approach ensures that, while data streams remain immutable, their descriptive metadata evolves in a controlled FAIR-compliant manner, benefiting researchers and institutions for cross-repository discoverability.