h5RDMtoolbox - A Python Toolbox for FAIR Data Management around HDF5

Sustainable data management is fundamental to efficient and successful scientific research. The FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) have been proven to be successful guidelines to enable comprehensible analysis, discovery and re-use. Although the topic has recently gained increasing awareness in both academia and industry, the engineering sciences in particular are lagging behind in managing the valuable asset of data. While large collaborations and research facilities have already implemented metadata strategies, smaller research groups and institutes are often missing a common strategy due to heterogeneous and rapidly changing environments as well as missing capacity or expertise. This paper presents an open source package called h5rdmtoolbox, written in Python. It is a general-purpose interface to HDF5 files with the aim of helping to quickly implement and maintain FAIR research data management throughout the data lifecycle, using HDF5 as the core file format. One of the key features of the toolbox is the flexible, high-level implementation of metadata standards, adaptable to the changing requirements of projects, collaborations and environments, such as experimental or computational setups. Implementation of interfaces to existing metadata schemas such as EngMeta or the CF Conventions are possible and part of the comprehensive documentation. Other benefits of the toolbox include a simplified interface to repository and database solutions.