Dear all,

following the task group's discussion and recommendation from January 18 I created a draft new term request (NTR) using the NTR template in the task group's repository [1]. The draft builds on the previous discussion in the task group [2] and the previous proposal to import dcterms:PhysicalResource to implement the top-level term [3]   Significant parts of the draft NTR have been taken from the previous term request proposed by Steve Baskaufs. I took the liberty of re-using parts of it as many aspects of the two proposals are identical - they differ in how the top-level term is implemented, not in its intended role.   The stability justification of the NTR makes reference to dwc:MaterialSample, dwc:PreservedSpecimen, dwc:LivingSpecimen, dwc:FossilSpecimen as existing terms in DwC which would be regarded as subclasses of the new term. While I think that what is contained in this section is correct, I wonder if information should be added regarding the addition of dwc:materialEntityType with an extensible list of corresponding values and if this means that the other terms need to be deprecated after all (I don't think they should - my understanding is that schema information (subclasses etc) and possibly other semantic information is easiest to complement the base terminology as additional layers if all relevant terms are actually included as individual elements in the terminology). Please advise.   Please also review the usage notes and the examples in the NTR in particular. I know that the placement of dwc:Organism is contentious. The current examples reflect my understanding of the new term.

Contributing to and Finalizing the draft:

I added the NTR draft [1] to our workspace (i.e. the Material Sample repo) as a new file (materialentity.md) in a provisional copy of the repo (a "branch") intended to finalize the former. This is accompanied by an associated discussion thread (a "pull request") [4] collecting all contributions until the final version of the NTR (and possibly complementary material, if any) can be incorporated into the canonical version of the repo (the "base branch"). Feel free to add to / change the material in the new branch and/or comment in the corresponding pull request [4]. Alternatively, feel free to comment in the main issue in our repo [2] where the discussion has taken place so far (informing the draft NTR and associated pull request).

After finalizing the NTR draft, the actual NTR would be made in DwC's main repo. I hope this procedure is in keeping with TDWG processes.

Let's try to finalize this by the 9th of February so it can be incorporated in the public review.

--- Christian

[1] https://github.com/tdwg/material-sample/blob/ntr-material-entity/primary_del... [2] https://github.com/tdwg/material-sample/issues/31 [3] https://github.com/tdwg/dwc/issues/421# [4] https://github.com/tdwg/material-sample/pull/32

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Dr. Christian Bölling Research Data Management Data Integration and Curation

Museum für Naturkunde Berlin Leibniz Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity Science Invalidenstraße 43 10115 Berlin Germany

Phone: +49 (0)30 889140 - 8327 Email: christian.boelling@mfn.berlin