GO FAIR Newsletter: January-February 2022

Editorial

Dear GO FAIR community,

We wish you a healthy and prosperous new year.

Looking ahead, we feel grateful to have had the opportunity to collaborate with so many like-minded people from different organisations and backgrounds from around the world, and we are excited to pick up where we left off in 2021.

The GO FAIR Offices in Germany, France and The Netherlands are happy about the commitments of Austria, Brazil, Denmark, and the US to continue with GO FAIR and jointly support the community of Implementation Networks. Representatives of the GO FAIR Offices agreed on essential but lightweight activities for 2022 to keep the GO FAIR community going while transitioning to a more distributed support model for the INs and a renewed GO FAIR governance.

As an important new initiative, the Offices will be rolling out a series of ‘wheel’ meetings, some co-organised with CODATA, to prevent re-invention of wheels and further drive convergence among the INs, among Data Together groups as well as cross-domain. The various communities will be invited to present their FAIR products suitable for reuse by others, to table questions and seek input and agreements around the reuse. Reusable FAIR enabling resources could then be officially listed as choices for other communities to reuse.
Outputs from the wheel meetings will also preempt the topics tackled as part of the second edition of the FAIR Convergence Symposium planned for 24 – 26 October 2022 and running back to back with a conference of the FAIR Digital Objects Forum.

More details about the wheel meetings, first topics (communities presenting a FAIR resource) and a way to participate will follow soon. We are now also contacting the IN coordinators to collect proposals from the GO FAIR community on the FAIR products to explore in the meetings.

We are looking forward to engaging events, building knowledge and convergence needed to create a growing FAIR implementation community. We have learnt much from all of you, and we will carry on this culture of exchange and collaboration!

All the best,
Laurent Crouzet, Barend Mons & Klaus Tochtermann
Strategic Directors, GO FAIR Initiative

Did you know… GO Read

In this section you will learn about Implementation Networks that have recently acquired “active” status, recent IN activities and opportunities. This way, we ensure that you always stay on top of things happening in the GO FAIR family.

Reports from internal events

On 3rd December 2021, the Polish Working Group of the Data Stewardship Competence Centers Implementation Network (DSCC-IN PL) was officially inaugurated.
Co-chairs of the GO BUILD Pillar— Chris Erdmann, Sandra Gesing, and Laure Haak— have drafted a pillar charter for GO FAIR US and hosted the first GO BUILD pillar meeting on 10 January 2022.

Outputs

FAIR Data Austria held two workshops on “Let’s make our data FAIR!” and “ Introduction to GIT”. If you missed them, you can now watch the recordings and consult the presentation slides.
Check out this handbook on “How to be FAIR with your data. A teaching and training handbook for higher education institutions” by Claudia Engelhardt et al. that aims to support higher education institutions with the integration of FAIR-related content in their curricula and teaching.
The BiodiFAIRse IN introduced a new concept to better scale workflows: The Essential Biodiversity Variables (EBVs). Read all about it here!

Opportunities

Apply for the 2nd Open Science Retreat on 15-16 February 2022! The topic is “Sustainable and reliable Open Science Infrastructures and Tools”. The deadline for applications is 28 January 2022.

Interesting reads by our INs and national offices

The FAIR StRePo IN shares:
- “We have seen the benefits of open science during the pandemic and a new report from the COVID-19 rapid review group, which includes FAIRsharing, and RoRI shows that papers on COVID-19 were published faster, and were open access, but open data and preprinting remained stubbornly low. There is no magic bullet. If society is to truly benefit from open science, all stakeholders in the scholarly publishing ecosystem need to intensify efforts to improve the situation: Scholarly Communication in Times of Crisis: The response of the scholarly communication system to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
The Vodan IN recommends two of their most recent news items, and a recently given presentation:
Several IN members and national office representatives are involved in the EOSC Task Force FAIR Metrics and Data Quality. Its kick-off meeting was held on 08 November 2021. The Task Force (TF) is currently working in two subteams on the topics (i) FAIR Metrics and (ii) Data Quality. The TF aims at providing a report on the implementation of FAIR Metrics and Data Quality in the EOSC with ample opportunity to gather community inputs.

National offices news

GO FAIR Austria reports:
- Learn about the goals and current results of the FAIR Data Austria project, co-funded by the Ministry of Education, Science and Research.
- It is not too late to join one of the webinars of the “Research Data Management in Austria” webinar series, bringing together researchers and research support staff to learn about various Research Data Management and Open Knowledge topics.
- PHAIDRACon 2021 took place on 17-19 November 2021. The Phaidra project has one focus: The effective long term preservation of academic data. The recordings of the two roundtables and sessions of the conference are available now for watching.
GO FAIR Germany shares:
- To our German-speaking community: On 21 October 2021 representatives from research data management institutions in Germany gathered for the 2nd meeting of 2021 of the German DSCC IN chapter GO Unite! to talk about future activities. New working groups were established. Annette Strauch-Davey from University of Hildesheim is inviting interested people to join the discussion in three of them:
  - Thursday, 10 February 2022, 1:30-2:30pm CET: “Ethics in research”;
  - Thursday, 24 February 2022, 1:30-2:30pm CET “Enhancement of RDM counseling services”;
  - Thursday, 03 March 2022, 1:30-2:30pm CET “Establishing RDM in curricula at universities”.
  - Do you have any questions? Then feel free to contact Annette Strauch-Davey for more information.
- If you are planning your next game night, have a look at Research Data Management Adventure. This game was developed by the University of Bath and Stellenbosch University to help postgraduate researchers to better manage their research data. Let the games begin!

GO FAIR US reports:
- Check out the most recent GO FAIR US Newsletter.
- On 13-17 December 2021, the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting took place. It featured many sessions, talks, and posters on FAIR while hosting the Data and Software FAIR and the #DataHelpDesk with ESIP and EarthCube.
- Earthcube, as part of their FAIR “How-to Series,” has developed a new training resource to educate researchers about how obtaining and utilizing identifiers for their datasets can make their materials more FAIR. Check out “Data Identifiers: Anchoring Your Data in Times of Change” to learn more about how research workflow can be reduced with dataset identifiers.

GO Meet

This section gives you an overview of conferences and workshops where you can meet up (virtually) with fellow GO FAIR members if you happen to attend the same event or are in the same town. In order for this category to work we do need your help! Please drop us a line at go-fair@zbw.eu and tell us where you can be met in the future.

External events

Meet INs

25 January – 22 February 2022 (virtual): Meet Barbara & Erik from GO FAIR at the three-part workshop series “Making the ENVRIs “FIP for purpose” through FAIR Convergence”.
08-10 March 2022 (virtual): Say hi to Suzanne from the CO-OPERAS IN and Klaus from GFISCO at the Open Science Conference 2022.
18 May 2022, 12:30pm (virtual): Coffee Lecture: “GO FAIR – GO Unite!”. Say hello to Monika and Patrick from the DSCC IN German chapter GO Unite!.

Meet GFISCO

02 February 2022 (virtual): Meet Tereza and Susanne from the FAIR Office Austria at the webinar “Metadata for Research Data”. Sign up now!

INternal events

Meet INs

19 January 2022 (virtual): Meet Christine, Dimitris, George and Peter from the FDO Forum IN at their High Level Panel on Future Data Space.
17 February 2022 (virtual): Say hello to Daniel, Monika and Ute from the EcoSoc IN at their meeting on remote access (in German).
Save the date: 26 October 2022: Meet IN representatives of the FDO Forum at their 1st International FDO Conference.

Meet GFISCO

28 January 2022 (virtual): Say hello to team members of the GO FAIR US office at the FAIR Points launch, a series for pragmatic approaches to FAIR.

People of GO FAIR

In this section we would like to introduce you to members of our GO FAIR family. In each newsletter we will provide you with a short profile of two GO FAIR members.

IN representatives

Meet the coordinators of the VODAN IN: Bert Meerman and Barend Mons

Bert Meerman is the Director of the GO FAIR FOUNDATION (GFF). GFF supports the GO FAIR movement by preparing the implementation of a coherent certification program and by coordinating international “missionary and kickstart” activities for GO FAIR. Bert is a senior business executive with a successful track record in finance, network, information and data technology. Bert has worked in a variety of management roles in different countries (The Netherlands, Far East / Hong Kong, Switzerland, Germany and Belgium).
Bert currently lives in the Netherlands, is married, has two children and two grandchildren.

Prof Dr Barend Mons is a molecular biologist by training and a leading FAIR data specialist. Before switching to advanced data stewardship and systems analytics in 2000, Barend spent a decade on fundamental research on malaria parasites and vaccines. He is currently Professor in Biosemantics in the Department of Human Genetics at the Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC). Barend is most known for innovations in scholarly collaboration, especially nanopublications, knowledge graph based discovery and, most recently, the FAIR data initiative and GO FAIR.
Barend is one of the Directors of GO FAIR, and President of CODATA. He is also a member of the Netherlands Academy of Technology and Innovation (ACTI) and European representative in the Board on Research Data and Information (BRDI) of the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine in the USA.

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