The FAIRsharing journey in RDA
Susanna-Assunta Sansone
SciLifeLab workshop, Data-driven life science and the RDA, 24 March, 2023 - https://www.slideshare.net/SusannaSansone
Academic Lead for Research Practice,
Engineering Science, Professor of Data Readiness
Oxford e-Research Centre, Associate Director
Interoperability Platform, Co-Lead
RDA Activities Focus Group, Steer. Com.
RDA FAIRsharing WG,
co-chair
www.rd-alliance.org/group/fairsharing-registry-connecting-data-policies-standards-databases.html

CC BY 4.0 International
An informative and educational resource, and a service
FAIRsharing provides curated descriptions and relationship graphs of
standards, databases and policies
COMMUNITY STANDARDS
POLICIES
by funders, journals
and other organizations
DATABASES
including repositories
and knowledgebases
Identifiers
Terminologies Guidelines
Formats

CC BY 4.0 International
Promote the value and use of standards, databases and policies in all disciplines,
by engaging stakeholders across all sectors, through all stages of the research life cycle
FAIRsharing mission and how we deliver it
Guide consumers to discover, select and use these resources with confidence
Help producers to make their resources more visible, more widely adopted and cited
Researchers Developers and curators Journal publishers
Societies and Alliances
Librarians and Trainers
Funders

CC BY 4.0 International
2011
doi: 10.1126/science.1180598
2009
WG
2015
From BioSharing to FAIRsharing, maturing under the RDA
Growth since launch
as of March 2023
collections
databases
standards
policies
all records
2011-2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
WG
2017
2016

CC BY 4.0 International
FAIRsharing in numbers: content, contributions, coverage
as of March 2023
collections
databases
standards
policies
all records
2011-2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023
Growth since launch
Types and subtypes Disciplines

CC BY 4.0 International
Users, adopters and collaborators include:
https://fairsharing.org/communities
An endorsed output of the
FAIRsharing WG (since 2015):
A WG (since 2015) in:
A recommended resource in EOSC reports
Users from all stakeholder groups
Researchers Developers and curators Journal publishers
Societies and Alliances
Librarians and Trainers Funders
Working with all stakeholders, all disciplines

CC BY 4.0 International
Domain experts, from RDA, EOSC clusters and worldwide, who
● Help curate content, standards, repositories and policies relevant to their EOSC
cluster, RDA group, research domain, or area of focus
● Contribute to educational material for the users
● Gain expertise, networking and attribution for their work, via ORCID
Funded by the:
Ambassadorship Programme
blog.fairsharing.org/?p=261
and
blog.fairsharing.org/?p=336
#FAIRsharingCommunityChampions Programme - from 2022
Curate – Influence – Gain Attribution – Engage – Learn
fairsharing.org/community_champions

CC BY 4.0 International
fairsharing.org/community_champions/our_champions
#FAIRsharingCommunityChampions Programme

CC BY 4.0 International
Infographics and factsheet by our Champions
fairsharing.org/educational

CC BY 4.0 International
Collections: showing organizations’ FAIR profiles
Collection URL: fairsharing.org/graph/3515;
each record has a DOI
Collection URL: fairsharing.org/graph/3513;
each record has a DOI
The standards,
repositories and
policies each EOSC
Cluster uses or endorses

CC BY 4.0 International
A growing number of tools and services access
FAIRsharing API, and use it for look-up, selection and
content retrieval for standards and repositories in:
● creation of data management plans
● enrichment of guidance and training material
● assessment of FAIRness
Content: powering 3rd party tools
doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7463421

CC BY 4.0 International
Stakeholder Advisors
● Amye Kenall, Research Square
● Adam Leary, Oxford University Press
● Catriona MacCallum, Hindawi
● Dagmar Meyer, ERC, Executive Agency
● Dominic Fripp, JISC
● Emma Ganley, Protocols.io
● Geraldine Clement-Stoneham, MRC
● Helena Cousijn, DataCite
● Lauren Cadwallader, PLoS
● Imma Subirats, FAO of the United Nations
● Kiera McNiece, Cambridge University Press
● Luiz Olavo Bonino, GO-FAIR
● Lorenzo Feri, Elsevier
● Mark Leggott, Digital Research Alliance of Canada
● Marta Teperek, TUDelft
● Michael Ball, Medical Research Council
● Mike Huerta, NIH National Library of Medicine
● Rebecca Grant, F1000
● Nick Everitt and Matthew Cannon, Taylor and Francis
● Sarah Callaghan, Strategy & Policy Unit, University of Oxford
● Sarah Stewart, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
● Scott Edmunds, GigaScience, Oxford University Press
● Simon Hodson, CODATA
● Sowmya Swaminathan, Springer Nature
● Theo Bloom, British Medical Journal
● Thomas Lemberger, EMBO Press
● Wei-Mun Chan, eLife
Executive Advisors
● David Carr, Independent expert
● Peter McQuilton, (FAIRsharing Founding Member), GSK
● Robert Hanisch, NIST
● Varsha Khodiyar, Independent Expert
RDA FAIRsharing WG Chairs
● Graham Smith, Springer Nature
● Holly Murray, Health Data Research UK
● Peter McQuilton, GSK
● Rebecca Grant, F1000
● Simon Hodson, CODATA
● Allyson Lister, University of Oxford
● Susanna-Assunta Sansone, University of Oxford
Community Champions
fairsharing.org/community_champions/our_champions
Operational Team
fairsharing.org/communities#governance
@FAIRsharing_org
contact@fairsharing.org @fairsharing@fediscience.org
www.rd-alliance.org/group/fairsharing-registry-connecting-data-policies-standards-databases.html

Pharmas and academia join forces -
A role for RDA?
Philippe Rocca-Serra (co-lead)
ELIXIR-UK, University of Oxford
Vassilios Ioannidis (co-lead)
ELIXIR-Swiss, Vital-IT Group, and SIB
Wei Gu
ELIXIR-LU, University of Luxembourg
Tooba Abbassi-Daloii
ELIXIR-NL, Maastricht University
Salvador Capella-Gutierrez
ELIXIR-Spain, BSC
Susanna-Assunta Sansone
ELIXIR-UK, University of Oxford
Ishwar Chandramouliswaran
NIH, Office of Data Science Strategy
elixir-europe.org
The FAIR Cookbook Editorial Board
SciLifeLab workshop, Data-driven life science and the RDA, 24 March, 2023 - https://www.slideshare.net/SusannaSansone

Authored by almost 100 data
professionals from industry and
academia, led by ELIXIR Nodes,
with participation of USA NIH
faircookbook.elixir-europe.org
Hands-on, technical step-by-step examples
Write recipes, share your
expertise, showcase your tools
Recommend in policies, use
in educational material
Sustained in ELIXIR and
adopted internationally!
An open, live resource for the life science with recipes that cover the operation steps of FAIR data management

https://faircookbook.elixir-europe.org
Editorial Board: faircookbook-ed@elixir-europe.org
Pre-print:
doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.715
6792
Article in press at:
An open, live resource for the life science with recipes that cover the operation steps of FAIR data management

● Content covers:
○ omics
○ pre-clinical
○ clinical areas
But not limited to it!
Coverage and learning objectives
Learn how to improve the FAIRness with exemplar datasets
Understand the levels and indicators of FAIRness
Discover open source technologies, tools and services
Find out the required skills
Acknowledge the challenges

Growing content
https://faircookbook.elixir-europe.org/content/search-wizard.html

https://fairplus.github.io/Data-Maturity
Maturity level and indicators
Provide insights into
FAIR Maturity reached by
applying a specific recipe
to improve a dataset

Focuses on addressing needs
Goal: improving visibility of content, e.g.:
Goal: semantic integration of datasets from multiple sources, e.g.:
Goal: security compliance and with regulators, e.g.:
https://w3id.org/faircookbook/FCB0
10
https://w3id.org/faircookbook/FCB00
7
https://w3id.org/faircookbook/FCB00
6
https://w3id.org/faircookbook/FCB02
0
https://w3id.org/faircookbook/FCB00
4
https://w3id.org/faircookbook/FCB01
4
https://w3id.org/faircookbook/FCB03
5

The FAIRification framework in a recipe
https://w3id.org/faircookbook/FCB079

Credit and citability:
because all contributions matters!
CreDiT
attribution ontology
https://w3id.org/faircookbook/FCB006

Motivations and ambitions
beyond the hype
Large body of generic FAIR
guidance
Motivations
Non-specific guidance for
the life sciences
Ambitions
Target specific situations to deliver a guide with
applied examples
Join academia and industry forces to make the
case for FAIR data management
Build capacity for high quality data
management in the private and public sectors
Lack of practical examples
of ‘how-to’ with different
data types and scenarios

A role for RDA?
● Leverage on the RDA community expertise and make a call for contributions?
• Many topics, and related recipes, are applicable across disciplines
• Address common challenges and find common solutions at pre-competitive level (industry)
● How to manage relevance to Life Science (ELIXIR and pharmas), while expanding?
● Quality over quantity of the contributions: proof of FAIR competence (as individual and as an
organisation)? Eg
• Involved in data centric projects as data managers
• Authored publication, datasets, reports, technical documentation
• (For industry) provided service as data curators, data vendors.
● Currently one Editorial Board, with a lot of work
• Consider multiple domain focused Boards?
● Just engage with RDA during pleaneries?
• Stay connected to its growing community and keep abreast with the latest activities
• Expand the network of potential users, adopters and do target invites for contributions