Periodic Reporting for period 2 - FAIRsFAIR (Fostering FAIR Data Practices in Europe)
Okres sprawozdawczy: 2020-09-01 do 2022-02-28
Our overall objective was to accelerate the realization of the goals of the EOSC by opening up and sharing knowledge, expertise, guidelines, implementations, new trajectories, courses and education on FAIR matters. FAIRsFAIR seeked to establish a level playing field for European member states (and beyond) when it comes to contributing data to scientific and scholarly communities and re-using data from elsewhere. In this way it contributed to the culture change required for the wide adoption of FAIR practices. We employed the help of many stakeholders to accomplish this.
FAIRsFAIR produced a wide range of guidance, tools and training for different stakeholder groups: researchers, data stewards, data repositories, research performing organisations, as well as policy makers and funders. We are currently witnessing substantive interest in, and adoption and implementation of these products by our stakeholders in the project and beyond, not only in Europe but also elsewhere.
In the later phases of the project there has been a focus on sustainability activities. Planning for the long-term sustainability of project outputs was central to the whole project. The approach consisted of developing various measures and activities during the lifetime of the project as well as preparing the ground for the period after the end of the project.
The third SF workshop which was restructured as a series of eight online sessions running in 2021. The workshops were used to measure the progress towards implementing the recommendations outlined in the Turning FAIR into Reality report.
There have been third iterations of both the work on Persistence and Interoperability, as well as the recommendations on FAIR Semantics. A hackathon was organized for repositories to test and further develop implementation of the FAIRdata Point to support semantic interoperability and testing it against the F-UJI tool. The Framework for FAIR assessment of services was published and presented.
To support the implementation of recommendations for policy makers, research communities and repositories, a programme of targeted support was delivered, and a suite of resources was developed.
The CoreTrustSeal+FAIRenabling Capability and Maturity model, the Repository Finder, as well as the latest versions of the FAIRsFAIR metrics and the subsequent FAIR data assessment tools FAIR-Aware and F-UJI were released. FAIR-Aware and F-UJI were heavily tested, presented, and promoted to successfully foster uptake in the research community. The Repository Support Programme was successfully carried out and wrapped-up. 2021 saw the continued development of the FAIRdata forum, and the competence centre activities in WP6 including the development of the training library of resources, a new self paced online data stewards training course (in collaboration with EOSC Synergy), and a proof of concept materials browser providing a practical demonstration of Terms4FAIRSkills terminology. The CODATA-RDA Data Science School was moved to a 10 week virtual school and the team delivered a fully revised data stewardship instructor train-the-trainer programme.
Three practical tools to support universities in integrating FAIR data-related skills and competences in their programmes at the bachelor, master and doctoral levels, were finalized: the FAIR Competence Framework for Higher Education, the FAIR Adoption Handbook for Universities and the Good Practices in FAIR Competence Education.
All of the activities mentioned above were aimed to create practical solutions for the use of the FAIR data principles throughout the research data life cycle. We produced guidance, tools and training for a large range of stakeholders. In total FAIRsFAIR has completed 54 deliverables, and achieved 59 project milestones. We published our deliverables, scientific publications, and relevant outputs to ZENODO. A dedicated community (holding 233 outputs) was created for this: https://zenodo.org/communities/fairsfair.
The main outputs of the project are:
In the category FAIR guidance: FAIR implementation stories and guidance, FAIR adoption handbook for higher education institutions, FAIR data policy checklist and structured policy description template, Framework for assessing FAIR-enabling services, Recommendations for FAIRness of research software, FAIR competence framework and Recommendations on FAIR semantics.
In the category FAIR tools: Capability model for FAIR-enabling organizations (ACME-FAIR), FAIR-Aware, F-UJI, FAIR-enabling repository finder, FAIR-enabling repository finder, FAIRdata forum, CoreTrustSeal + FAIR certification, European network of FAIR-enabling trusted digital repositories.
In the category FAIR training: Training materials, Good practices in FAIR education, Data steward Schools.
FAIRsFAIR produced a wide range of guidance, tools and training for different stakeholder groups. We are currently witnessing substantive interest in, and adoption and implementation of these products by our stakeholders in the project and beyond, not only in Europe but also elsewhere.
This means that FAIRsFAIR contributed to the removal of technical and organisational barriers to ensure FAIR research data. The project enhanced the uptake of FAIR data, contributed to harmonisation of related policies in Europe and facilitated alignment with international initiatives on research data sharing.
The success of a project like FAIRsFAIR is difficult to measure and quantify. In the State of Open Data Report 2019 less than 20% of the international group of researchers surveyed stated that they were familiar with the FAIR principles (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.9980783.v2 ). In the same survey two years later over 30% of the researchers claimed that their data comply to a certain extend with the FAIR principles and over 20% even claimed that their data comply very much with the principles (https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.17061347.v1). These figures show a real improvement. And it would be wonderful if some of this progress is the result of our work in FAIRsFAIR.