Editorial

Dear GO FAIR community,

We can all be proud of the developments within the GO FAIR initiative. Through cross-Implementation Network (IN) collaborations, structured workshops and meetings, we have made significant progress towards community convergence on the Internet of FAIR Data and Services. “Convergence” will be the theme of our second annual GO FAIR meeting of INs which will be held on 23 & 24 January 2020 in Hamburg. Save the date and look for the online registration coming in the next couple of weeks!

The Data Intelligence Special Issue on emerging FAIR implementation choices and challenges, co-edited by Barend Mons, Erik Schultes and Annika Jacobsen, is a compilation devoted to community efforts around FAIR practices, and is now published online. We anticipate this to be the first of an annual series of Data Intelligence Special Issues on FAIR.
Building on the FAIR Convergence Matrix exercise from the first annual GO FAIR IN meeting in 2019, the Matrix development team was launched in June. The team has made significant progress on the analysis and refinements of the new generation Matrix questionnaire. Their work results have been presented both at CODATA 2019 Beijing and at the GEDE/RDA co-located event in Helsinki. We encourage you to read more about the FAIR Convergence Matrix progress on our website.
In July an in-depth assessment was made to frame the “centre of the hourglass” by comparing components of the Digital Object Architecture (recently advanced by GEDE/RDA) and the Linked Data Platform. Over the last weeks, a series of international consensus meetings coordinated by GO FAIR have resulted in the ‘FAIR Digital Object Framework’ which is now under discussion by important stakeholders in this field.
Taken together, the Matrix and the FAIR Digital Object Framework complement each other, driving convergence in FAIR implementations for both the domain-relevant community standards as well as the generic infrastructure.

Continue reading to find out how you, the GO FAIR community, are making convergence on FAIR implementations happen.

All the best,
Patrick Garda, Barend Mons & Klaus Tochtermann
Strategic Directors, GO FAIR Initiative

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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.

New “active” GO FAIR Implementation Networks:

Ambassadors IN
The Ambassadors Implementation Network (AIN) aims to strengthen the uptake of FAIR in new countries and new domains by involving students as well as researchers in exploration of the relevance of FAIR in their specific context and becoming the IN members. This IN of self-trained GO FAIR Ambassadors plans to promote the understanding of FAIR globally by addressing governments, authorities of our own country, as well as many other stakeholders, while leveraging the role of international organisations active in the research data ecosystem, such as GO FAIR, CODATA, RDA and WDS. IN leaders are Aliya Aktau from Kazakhstan, Mariam Basajja from Uganda and Mirjam Van Reisen from The Netherlands.

Reports from internal events

• The GO FAIR Implementation Network on Discovery has taken up the challenge to provide interfaces and other user-facing services to enhance the findability of research data. On September 16, 2019 this IN organized a workshop entitled “Data Discovery Across Disciplines” at the Open Science Fair 2019, in which they discussed current challenges and best practices around data discovery, as well as existing tools from the network. Have a look at the full workshop report for more detailed information.
• On September 30-October 1, 2019 the FAIR Funders meeting took place in Leiden. This meeting, attended by an international group of funders as well as several service providers, focused on the challenges funders face when assessing the quality of FAIR data stewardship plans and the levels of FAIRness of research outputs. The FAIR Funder Implementation Study was introduced.
• On October 1-2, 2019 the kick-off meeting of the GO FAIR implementation network “Cross-Domain Interoperability of Heterogeneous Research Data (GO Inter)“ with 20 participants from 13 organizations took place at GESIS in Cologne. The network aims at bringing together experts from the Semantic Web community, data providers and use case partners from different domains in order to apply, develop and evaluate methods, tools and guidelines for implementing and assessing the (semantic) interoperability of heterogeneous research (meta)data across discipline borders. Thus, the network focuses on the “I” in FAIR, interoperability. This is seen as one of the main obstacles for the combination of research data from different scientific disciplines in the context of multidisciplinary research. Find the full workshop report here.
• Read this short report on the Dutch Data Stewardship Competency Centers (DSCC) Manifesto Meeting taking place in Leiden on October 2, 2019.
• On 18 October 2019 a delegation from the Chinese Academy of Sciences visited the GO FAIR office in Leiden. There were exciting discussions about the cooperation towards the implementation of the Internet of FAIR Data and Services.
• Luiz Bonino, Xavier Engels, Erik Schultes and Catharina Wasner attended RDA’s 14th Plenary on October 23-25, 2019 in Helsinki. Read about some of the highlights in this short report.

Report from co-organised event

• On 28-29 October 2019 experts met at the Observatoire de Paris to discuss how to move forward on data infrastructure technology convergence. This meeting was the culmination of a series of international expert meetings held since August 2019, striving towards a joint agreement on FAIR Digital Objects and a plan for further collaborative development. The meeting of about 30 people was co-organized by GFISCO and attended by Barend Mons, Luiz Bonino and Erik Schultes. A team of engineers is now being assembled. An update will follow in the next issue of the newsletter and during the yearly GO FAIR International Implementation Networks meeting in Hamburg in January 2020.

Outputs

• Have you seen our most recent video “FAIR made easy“? Watch it to find out what the FAIR Funder Implementation Study is all about.
• Check out the Data Intelligence Special Issue on Emerging FAIR Practices, supervised by the Chinese Academy of Sciences. This Special Issue is dedicated to emerging FAIR implementation choices and challenges and co-edited by GO FAIR.
• Silvia from the German GO FAIR office attended the Open Science FAIR 2019. She shares her impressions in this news item.

Opportunities

• Apply for co-creation activities and actions related to the work of the EOSC Secretariat to support the EOSC Governance. Click here for more information and to apply.
• Submit your abstract to the Call for Sessions (group session, joint meeting, BoF session) for the RDA 15th plenary from 18 to 20 March 2020 in Melbourne! Deadline is 28 November 2019 (midnight UTC).

GO Meet

This section gives you an overview of conferences and workshops where you can meet up with fellow GO FAIR members if you happen to attend the same event or are in the same town. We think that it is always more pleasant to interact face-to-face rather than just virtually.

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:
Please inform us about events you attend or organize at go-fair@zbw.eu. This way, you can meet up with members of the GO FAIR family.

Meet GFISCO:

• 15-16 November 2019, Washington, DC (USA): Say hi to Klaus at the Rich Context Workshop
• 25 November 2019, Genova (Italy): Say hello to Barend at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia where he will give a keynote
• 26-28 November 2019, Budapest (Hungary): Meet Anja at the EOSC Symposium 2019

INternal events

• 18-19 December 2019, Leiden (The Netherlands): Workshop and launch of the International Data Stewardship Competency Centers IN

Meet GFISCO:

• 21 November 2019, Hamburg (Germany): Manifesto Writing Workshop
• 22 November 2019, Leiden (The Netherlands): Matrix Development Meeting
• 25 November 2019, Hamburg (Germany): GO TRAIN Workshop
• 23-24 January 2020, Hamburg (Germany): 2nd International IN Meeting
  

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: one IN representative and one Steering Committee representative.

IN representative:

Odile Hologne, member of the Food Systems IN

Odile Hologne is Head of Department of scientific and technical information at INRA, the French Institute for Agricultural Research. In this capacity she is responsible for implementing open access as well as open data policy and services, and is involved in numerous international working groups on open science issues in the agricultural food sector including GODAN, RDA and GO FAIR. Odile is one of the founders of the RDA Interest group on agriculture data and initiated the work of the wheat data interoperability working group which produced high value outputs to support the development of FAIR data for the benefit of the wheat research community. She is also coordinator of the H2020 project eROSA “Towards an e-infrastructure roadmap for open science in agriculture”. Within GO FAIR Odile is part of the Implementation Network Food Systems that aims at advancing a global data ecosystem for agriculture and food by implementing FAIR data and services, and serves as GO FAIR Executive Board member.

Steering Committee representative:

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