Editorial
Dear GO FAIR community,
Spring is just around the corner, and while we are looking forward to warmer and longer days, we are happy to look back at the last two winter months that we used to sum up activities internally, and discuss the best way to move forward to further advance FAIRification in research data management together with you.
We hope to provide you soon with an update on the series of ‘wheel meetings’ we are planning to roll out in cooperation with CODATA. The output of these meetings shall feed into the second edition of the FAIR Convergence Symposium that will take place on 24-26 October 2022 in Leiden.
Both the 2nd FAIR Convergence Symposium and the 1st conference of the FAIR Digital Objects Forum will be part of the ‘Hotzone’ week in the context of Leiden 2022: European City of Science. That week will be dedicated to FAIR and, specifically, to FAIR Digital Objects as the core machine-actionable units of information necessary to build an Internet and Web of FAIR data and services. If you haven’t done so yet, save the dates: 24-28 October 2022!
Last but not least we would like to inform you that we are reducing the frequency of our GO FAIR Newsletter given the new more lightweight nature of GO FAIR. We will still inform you on a regular basis what the GO FAIR community has been up to, but instead of six times per year, we are rather looking at once every three to four months. If you would like to recommend our newsletter to your friends and colleagues, they can easily subscribe here.
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.
Outputs
- The FAIR Digital Objects Forum organized a High Level Panel on Future Data Space. The panel initiated a discussion across initiatives about major organizational principles and key pillars, and was intended as the first of a series of meetings on this topic. It featured innovative thinkers and discussants. Recordings and slides are now available.
- Erik Schultes presented “FAIR Principles, Interpretations, Implementation Considerations, Evaluation, Certification, and Convergence” in the FAIRification STEP 5 webinar on Value and limitations of FAIR assessment tools. Visit the website for a summary and recording.
- The FAIR Digital Objects Forum published its March Bulletin.
Opportunities
- Join the ESFRI 20th anniversary conference: European Research Infrastructures at the heart of scientific discoveries on 25 March 2022. This event wants to celebrate the achievements of the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), highlighting the role it plays in enhancing European excellence in research and innovation. You can register here.
Interesting reads by our INs and national offices
- FAIR StRePo reports the release of the all-new FAIRsharing site as it has now moved out of beta and into production at https://fairsharing.org.
- The Chemistry IN has been working with projects in the European NanoSafety Cluster to make research output more FAIR. One approach being worked out is Bioschemas that provides a solution to link identifiers like the InChI and the European Registry on Nanomaterial identifiers to nanomaterials. For this, the ELIXIR Toxicology Community developed the Bioschemas ChemicalSubstance profile, which has now been released as part of http://schema.org. In one use case, the Chemical Substance annotation is used to share information about the Joint Research Center representative industrial nanomaterials.
- Several IN members and national office representatives are involved in the EOSC Task Force Data Stewardship curricula and career paths. The Task Force focuses on the role of Data Stewards and their core activities, and is organized into two workstreams: Minimal Curriculum and Career Paths. The aim is to define data stewardship job roles and curricula to ensure these are recognised and aligned across Europe, and develop recommendations for potential career paths considering appropriate recognition and rewards for data management activities.
National offices news
- GO FAIR Austria reports:
- How to make not only data but also databases FAIR? Two teams from University of Vienna and TU Wien are developing a novel database repository system: DBRepo.
- The Austrian Science Fund (FWF) has updated its DMP template to include additional guidance.
- FAIR Data Austria is organizing another virtual webinar series on “Research Data Management in Austria” (not just for Austrians or Austria-based people).
- GO FAIR Brazil reports: New Open Science Tools & Courses for the Brazilian academic community:
- The Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology (IBICT) shared that they initiated the BrCris project that is developing a CRIS platform to provide tools for the Brazilian academic community with consolidated data from the national scientific production. The Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) launched the Transversal Discipline on “Introduction to Open Science” for all postgraduate courses at Fiocruz, with a FAIR data management module.
- GO FAIR US reports:
- The FAIR Data Podcast released its second episode on the evolution of FAIR data featuring GO FAIR US’s Chris Erdmann.
- Exciting News! GO FAIR US’s Office Head, Christine Kirkpatrick, has been elected Secretary General for CODATA, which further strengthens the link between these initiatives.
- Across four sessions this February and March, the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and GO FAIR US held the FAIR for US workshop. A report will be published by summer.
- 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.
- Kevin Coakley, Senior Integration Engineer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center whose research focus is on reproducibility and AI, makes AI and reproducibility an approachable topic in this month’s blog post which includes a link to his recorded talk, “Reproducibility in AI, and What Computing Professionals Should Know for Supporting Researchers”.
- The FAIR Points launch, a series for pragmatic approaches, occurred on 28 January 2022 with a discussion on challenges, opportunities and pragmatic measures towards the implementation of the FAIR data principles. On 24 February 2022 participants explored the open source publishing platform ResearchEquals, where you can publish your entire research journey, step by step. Check out the past and upcoming events (including recordings & presentations) & get involved!
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
- 14-18 March 2022 (virtual): Meet Coline, Olivier and Yvan from the BiodiFAIRse IN at the Smörgåsbord 2022: Tapas Edition. Join this week of e-learning around scientific data analysis (notably ecology data).
- 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
- 23 March 2022 (virtual): Say hi to colleagues from the GO FAIR US office at the next FAIR Points event.
- 25-29 July 2022 (virtual): Meet colleagues from the GO FAIR US office at the FSCI2022 Online. This year’s theme is “Collaboration for Action: Sharing Knowledge Across Boundaries”.
INternal events
Meet INs
- 28 April 2022 (virtual): Say hello to Monika and Patrick at their GO Unite! workshop. Stay tuned for more information!
- 26-29 October 2022, Leiden (The Netherlands): Meet IN representatives of the FDO Forum at their 1st International FDO Conference.
Meet GFISCO
- 14 March 2022 (virtual): Say hi to Chris, Sandra, and Laure from the GO FAIR US office at their 3rd GO BUILD meeting focusing on FAIR software assessment and badging.
- 23 March 2022 (virtual): Say hello to Barbara and Tomasz from GO FAIR Austria at the workshop „FAIR for sensitive data”.
- 09 March, 22 March, 27 April 2022 (virtual): Meet colleagues from the GO FAIR Austria office at the “Research Data Management in Austria” webinar series.
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
MMeet the coordinators of the EcoSoc IN: Daniel Buck, Ute Hoffstätter and Monika Linne
Daniel Buck is a historian and social scientist. He is head of the Research Data Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (FDZ-DZHW), which he contributed to establishing. He is particularly involved in the areas of access to sensitive research data, legal aspects of data archiving and data access. Daniel is interested in considering quantitative and qualitative data types and methods in archiving and secondary use to support the RDCs broader interdisciplinary field of research. He is a member of the Committee for Data Access (FDI Committee), which is a part of the German Data Forum (RatSWD). He is involved in the KonsortSWD project (consortium within the National Research Data Infrastructure Germany) and the coordination of the GO FAIR Implementation Network EcoSoc.
Ute Hoffstätter is a sociologist (M.A.) at the Research Data Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (FDZ-DZHW). She contributed to the establishment of the Research Data Center and is particularly involved in the areas of access to sensitive research data and metadata. Ute is interested in fostering the FAIR principles in the EcoSoc disciplines, as well as providing support for the CoreTrustSeal certification of research data centers. She is involved in the KonsortSWD project (consortium within the National Research Data Infrastructure Germany) and the coordination of the GO FAIR Implementation Network EcoSoc.
Monika Linne is a sociologist (M.A.) at GESIS Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences, where she supports the NFDI consortium KonsortSWD. Here she sets up the RDM Competence Base RDMCompas, which is a training and learning platform for employees of the research data centers accredited by the German Data Forum (RatSWD). Before that, she worked as a research assistant at the Competence Center for Research Data Management (C³RDM) at the University of Cologne. She started engaging for the establishment of the FAIR Principles as a research assistant in the International Support and Coordination Office of the GO FAIR Initiative. In addition to the EcoSoc IN, she coordinates the GO FAIR Implementation Network GO Unite!, which is a national chapter of the Data Stewardship Competence Center (DSCC IN).
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