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Editorial

 

 

Dear GO FAIR community,

Efforts to shape research data infrastructures are gaining momentum all over Europe. The founding countries of the GO FAIR International Support and Coordination Office (GFISCO) are no exception in this respect. France and the Netherlands both have a “National Plan for Open Science” detailing how to achieve optimal reuse of research data. France moreover has a “National Strategy on Research Infrastructures” that aims to securely interconnect the country’s research infrastructures. Meanwhile Germany is launching its “National Research Data Infrastructure” by inviting proposals for discipline-specific consortia to be coordinated by a central Directorate. At the European level, the EOSC Executive Board recently published a “Strategic Implementation Plan” detailing implementation steps for the European Open Science Cloud in 2019 and 2020.

The GO FAIR initiative has specific assets when it comes to contributing to the research data infrastructure landscape: the GO FAIR Implementation Networks (INs). Our INs are agile, bottom-up and, thus, close to research communities’ needs. Due to their diverse composition, INs overcome institutional, national and regional boundaries. In these respects, we are ahead of many others in the field.
The current momentum is a great opportunity for GO FAIR to come to the fore with its work results – even if preliminary. The GFISCO organizes another IN Meeting to be held from Jan 23-24, 2020, in Hamburg for exactly this purpose. Until then, we encourage you to think about the following questions: What results has your Implementation Network already produced that could be useful for others? How can Implementation Networks support each other? Which topics could your Implementation Network tackle more easily by the help of other INs’ expertise? Please provide us with input at office@go-fair.org – subject line: Input to IN meeting – so that we are able to create an ideal atmosphere for synergies and progress!

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:

IN-Africa
The Implementation Network Africa – short: IN-Africa – has been initiated by institutions from eight African countries (Zimbabwe, South Africa, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Burkina Faso, Nigeria and Liberia). Its main objective is to establish an Internet of FAIR Data and Services based on the principles of African philosophy and supported by African governance of data, data ownership, protection and security. This objective will be realized by tackling various tasks, such as connecting African Library services to FAIR, linking African Social Science networks to Implementation Networks of GO FAIR in Social Sciences and expanding communication and media attention on FAIR in Africa. IN leader is Mirjam van Reisen, Professor of Computing for Society at Leiden University and Professor of International Relations, Innovation and Care at Tilburg University.

Reports from internal events

  • On 13 June 2019, the FAIR Implementation Matrix Development meeting took place in Leiden (the Netherlands). Read the meeting report for more information.
  • The GO FAIR office organised its first GO CHANGE workshop on 19 June 2019 in Frankfurt/Main (Germany). Read the workshop report for objectives and results.

Outputs

  • As an output of the GO CHANGE workshop in June 2019, the GFISCO has started an online collection of references to “FAIR Data Resources” which will be gradually extended. You can check it out here: www.go-fair.org/resources/more-on-fair/

Opportunities

  • Participate in a survey to map interest in the M4M workshops! The Metadata 4 Machines (M4M) workshops are being organised by GO FAIR to assess the state of metadata practices in data-related communities and stimulate the creation and re-use of FAIR metadata standards and machine-ready metadata templates (definitions of metadata categories).
    Would your IN, community or organisation be interested in holding such an event? If so, please let us know in this short survey (3 min to complete) by September 20: https://forms.gle/cfp9oKGoQQHxsdLL6 Your reaction will help the GFISCO to address funding options of such workshops during a meeting planned in September with funders.
  • Submit your manuscript for the special issue “FAIR data, FAIR Services, and the European Open Science Cloud”. Deadline: December 31, 2019: https://www.mdpi.com/journal/publications/special_issues/fair
  • Join the focus groups organised as part of the FAIRsFAIR project:
  • Submit an abstract to the Call for Poster Presentations or Call for Speakers for the next Open Science Conference in Berlin (11-12 March 2020). Deadline: 11 October 2019

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:

  • 16-18 September 2019, Porto (Portugal): Meet the CO-OPERAS, Discovery, FAIR StRePo & GO INTER INs at the Open Science Fair

Meet GFISCO:

INternal events

  • 9 September 2019, virtual: GO FAIR Executive Board Meeting
  • 1-2 October 2019, Cologne (Germany): GO Inter kick-off meeting
  • 2 October 2019, Leiden (the Netherlands): Data Stewardship Competence Centers workshop

Meet GFISCO:

  • 30 September – 1 October 2019, Leiden (the Netherlands): FAIR Funder meeting
  • 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:

Merlijn van Rijswijk, co-leader of the Metabolomics IN

Merlijn van Rijswijk is Managing Director of the Netherlands Metabolomics Centre where he facilitates transfer of knowledge and technology within a network of committed partners from both science and industry in the field of metabolomics. Concurrently affiliated with the Dutch Tech Centre of Life Sciences, Merlijn cares about combining metabolomics with other life sciences technologies and bio-informatics. Integrated life science approaches is also what he is advocating as community facilitator of the Metabolomics IN in which cheminformaticians, bioinformaticians, biologists, data scientists, computer scientists and representatives from data archives and publishers work towards realizing the vision of machine-readable FAIR datasets in the field of metabolomics and fluxomics.

Steering Committee representative:

Rianne Letschert, Dutch ministerial representative

Rianne Letschert (1976) studied International Law at Tilburg University, the University of Amsterdam and the University of Montpellier. In March 2011 she was appointed Professor to the newly established chair in Victimology and International Law at Tilburg University. Professor Letschert received a Vidi grant from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) in May 2015 for her research on the impact of international tribunals on societies and people who are confronted with serious violations of human rights and international crime. She is an expert consultant on casualty cases to the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, and she previously also directed the International Victimology Institute Tilburg (INTERVICT). In 2012 she became a member of the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), and was appointed as its chair in April 2015 till 2018. Professor Letschert has been Rector Magnificus of Maastricht University since 1 September 2016.

 

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