Jan Taubitz

Zitierhinweis: Taubitz, Jan (2022) Entwicklung eines Open-Science-Indikators am Beispiel des FAIR Data Dashboards der Charité – Open Access Blog Berlin. DOI: https://doi.org/10.59350/nyts9-7q976  Dieser Beitrag zeigt am Beispiel des FAIR Data Dashboards der Charité — Universitätsmedizin Berlin, wie Open-Science-Indikatoren entstehen können.

Entwicklung eines Open-Science-Indikators am Beispiel des FAIR Data Dashboards der Charité

Scott Edmunds

*As part of the FAIRsharing Community Network (see [previous
blog](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/presenting-the-fairsharing-community-network/))
and [joint Force11 and Research Data Alliance (RDA) FAIRsharing Working
Group](https://www.force11.org/group/biosharingwg) we have been involved
in efforts to develop a shared, cross-publisher list of recommended data
deposition repositories. The first fruits of these are a
[preprint](https://osf.io/m2bce/) from the working group and
[DataCite](https://datacite.org/) (of which we are also members)
summarising what we feel should be the key criteria for selection. Being
a (FAIR) sharing and caring community we are now seeking wider feedback
on these, and the many publishers involved have published a guest post
here explaining this work on data repository selection and providing a
forum for wider community input.*

**FAIRsharing Needs You** 
![FAIRsharing feedback on Data Repository
Selection](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screenshot-2019-11-29-at-12.09.15-PM-300x300.png){.alignright
.wp-image-3123 .size-medium fetchpriority="high" decoding="async"
width="300" height="300"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screenshot-2019-11-29-at-12.09.15-PM-300x300.png 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screenshot-2019-11-29-at-12.09.15-PM-150x150.png 150w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screenshot-2019-11-29-at-12.09.15-PM-768x768.png 768w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screenshot-2019-11-29-at-12.09.15-PM-1024x1024.png 1024w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Screenshot-2019-11-29-at-12.09.15-PM.png 1618w"
sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px"}Publishers and journals are
developing data policies to ensure that datasets, as well as other
digital products associated with articles, are deposited and made
accessible via appropriate repositories, also in line with the [FAIR
Principles](https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18).  With thousands of
options available, however, the lists of deposition repositories
recommended by publishers are
[often](https://datascience.codata.org/article/10.5334/dsj-2017-042/)
[different](https://fairsharing.org/recommendations/)  and consequently
the guidance provided to authors may vary from journal to journal (see
the [*GigaScience* Editorial Policies & Reporting Standards
page](https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/pages/editorial_policies_and_reporting_standards)
and [FAIRsharing recommendation
page](https://fairsharing.org/recommendation/GigaScience) collecting
these together for examples). This is due to a lack of common criteria
used to select the data repositories, but also to the fact that there is
still no consensus of what constitutes a good data repository.

To tackle this, [FAIRsharing](https://fairsharing.org/) and
[DataCite](https://datacite.org/) have joined forces with a group of
publisher representatives (see the list of participants listed below)
who are actively implementing data policies and recommending data
repositories to researchers. The result of our work is a set of proposed
criteria that journals and publishers believe are important for the
identification and selection of data repositories, which can be
recommended to researchers when they are preparing to publish the data
underlying their findings.

Our work intends to

- reduce complexity for researchers when preparing their submissions to
 journals,
- increase efficiency for data repositories that currently have to work
 with all individual publishers, and
- simplify the process of recommending data repositories for publishers.

Our work will make the implementation of research data policies more
efficient and consistent, which may help to improve approaches to data
sharing by promoting the use of reliable data repositories.

Although we recognize that researchers and other stakeholders play a
role in the research data life cycle, in this first instance the target
audience for our work are other journals and publishers, repository
developers and maintainers, certification and other evaluation
initiatives, and other policy makers.

This ***proposed criteria*** are intended to:

- *guide* journals and publishers in providing authors with consistent
 recommendations and guidance on data deposition, and improve authors'
 data sharing practices;
- *reduce potential for confusion of researchers and support staff, and
 reduce duplication of effort by different publishers and data
 repositories*
- *inform* data repository developers and managers of the features
 believed to be important by journals and publishers;
- *apprise* certification and other evaluation initiatives, serving as a
 reference and perspective from journals and publishers;
- *drive* the curation of the description of the data repository in
 [FAIRsharing](https://fairsharing.org/), which will enable display,
 filter and search based on these criteria.

We invite you to [**read the pre-print article**](https://osf.io/m2bce/)
that describes the work, its motivation, relations to other initiatives,
and **provide us with feedback** via [this
form](https://tinyurl.com/RepoCriteriaFeedback).

**FAIRsharing Registry: connecting data policies, standards & databases
Working Group:** 
Susanna-Assunta Sansone, Peter McQuilton, Philippe Rocca-Serra
(FAIRsharing) Helena Cousijn2 (DataCite), Matthew Cannon, Nicholas
Everitt (Taylor & Francis), Wei Mun Chan (eLife), Ilaria Carnevale,
Marina Soares E Silva (Elsevier), Imogen Cranston, Hollydawn Murray,
Jonathan Threlfall (F1000), Scott Edmunds (*GigaScience*), Emma Ganley,
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz (PLOS), Chris Graf, Kathryn Sharples (Wiley), Varsha
K. Khodiyar (Springer Nature), Thomas Lemberger (EMBO Press), Catriona
J. MacCallum (Hindawi), Kiera McNeice (Cambridge University Press)

::: {.col-md-8}
::: {.blog-post}
**Further Reading 
**Sansone SA et al., Data Repository Selection: Criteria That Matter,
v2. *OSF Preprints* (2019) <https://osf.io/m2bce/>

Sansone SA et al., FAIRsharing, a cohesive community approach to the
growth in standards, repositories and policies. *Nature Biotechnology*
**37**, p358--367 (2019)
doi:[10.1038/s41587-019-0080-8](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-019-0080-8)
:::
:::

The post [FAIRsharing Guestpost: What Criteria Matters with Data
Repository
Selection?](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/fairsharing-data-repository-selection/){rel="nofollow"}
appeared first on
[GigaBlog](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog){rel="nofollow"}.

As part of the FAIRsharing Community Network (see previous blog) and joint Force11 and Research Data Alliance (RDA) FAIRsharing Working Group we have been involved in efforts to develop a shared, cross-publisher list of recommended data deposition repositories. The first fruits of these are a preprint from the working group and DataCite (of which we are also members) summarising what we feel should be the key criteria for selection.

FAIRsharing Guestpost: What Criteria Matters with Data Repository Selection?

Chris Armit

![Biocuration
2019](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screenshot_2019-05-06-Scott-Edmunds-on-Instagram-“Cambridge-cliche-shot”-300x286.jpg){.alignleft
.size-medium .wp-image-2854 loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300"
height="286"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screenshot_2019-05-06-Scott-Edmunds-on-Instagram-“Cambridge-cliche-shot”-300x286.jpg 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screenshot_2019-05-06-Scott-Edmunds-on-Instagram-“Cambridge-cliche-shot”-768x732.jpg 768w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screenshot_2019-05-06-Scott-Edmunds-on-Instagram-“Cambridge-cliche-shot”-1024x976.jpg 1024w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Screenshot_2019-05-06-Scott-Edmunds-on-Instagram-“Cambridge-cliche-shot”.jpg 1196w"
sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px"}The [12th International
*Biocuration* Conference](https://www.biocuration2019.org/) was held in
Cambridge, UK from April 7-10th 2019. As regular participants of the
meeting you can [read our
write-ups](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/tag/biocuration/) of the
meeting [going back to
2012](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/the-state-of-the-curation-nation/).
This is a forum for biocurators and developers to discuss their work and
to promote collaboration. *GigaScience* had a visible presence at
Biocuration 2019, which included an oral presentation by *GigaScience*
Lead Biocurator Chris Hunter, an engaging and thought-provoking workshop
on 'Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion' chaired by *GigaScience* Data
Editor and ISB Executive Committee member Mary Ann Tuli, and poster
presentations by *GigaScience* Database Developer Xiao Si Zhe and
*GigaScience* Data Scientist Chris Armit.

**From Knowledgebases to Micropublications 
**[Paul Sternberg](http://wormlab.caltech.edu/LabMembers/Paul), who is
Director of Caltech's Center for Biological Circuit Design and a
Principal Investigator of WormBase, delivered his keynote talk on
knowledgebases and highlighted that, "articles are too complex to read,
write, and ensure reproducibility. Data and knowledge does not flow into
knowledgebases." An intriguing solution, according to Paul, is the
example of micropublications and the [Micropublication
Biology](https://www.micropublication.org/) journal. Breaking up the
research cycle in a similar manner to the way we at *GigaScience* give
DOIs to the more granular Research Objects such as data, protocols and
workflows, in this scenario, authors are invited to complete a template,
equivalent to a curation form, as part of the micropublication
submission process. A feature of this submission process is that methods
per publication will take longer to complete, which is intentional as it
is hoped that this will enable more detailed methods to be captured per
experiment than is found in regular journal articles. As an example of a
micropublication that we are all familiar with, Paul showcased the
famous [1953 Watson and Crick Nature
paper](https://www.nature.com/articles/171737a0) which introduced the
famous DNA double helix in a single diagrammatic figure. Paul added the
quip that, "there is no data in this paper. To access the data, you
would have to ask Rosalind Franklin."

**Elixir: for the many or for the few 
**This was followed by presentations on Global Data Coalition by
EMBL-EBI Director [Rolf
Apweiler](https://www.ebi.ac.uk/about/people/rolf-apweiler), and Core
Data Resources by Elixir Director [Niklas
Blomberg](https://elixir-europe.org/about-us/governance/director). A
main point that came across from this session was that reference
datasets are the foundation of, what Niklas refers to as "the data
ecosystem". However, in an emerging funding crisis, University of
Cambridge's Paul Schofield had the excellent question for Rolf and
Niklas, "is there danger of government funding large resources at the
expense of smaller resources?" This is a salient issue as scientific
research does require in-depth knowledge and expertise, and many of the
smaller database resources were created to cater to the needs of a
specific research community. These smaller resources are additionally
those that are most under threat from funding cuts at this moment in
time. Niklas acknowledged that, "small databases have to obtain funding
at national level, which is difficult" and that "Elixir helps small
databases connect with larger databases." However, I did not hear an
explanation of how Elixir will financially support smaller database
resources, or whether this is indeed its intention, and with the
existing funding crisis we have to consider that this issue remains
thoroughly unresolved.

::: {#attachment_2848 .wp-caption .alignnone style="width: 610px"}
![Biocuration
2019](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_4477-1024x768.jpg){.wp-image-2848
loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2848" width="600" height="450"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_4477-1024x768.jpg 1024w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_4477-300x225.jpg 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_4477-768x576.jpg 768w"
sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px"}

Niklas Blomberg and Rolf Apweiler discuss Core Data Resources. This
session was chaired by Sandra Orchard.
:::

**The challenge of choosing the correct Data License 
**The workshop on '[**Diverse Perspectives on Data
Licensing**](https://www.biocuration2019.org/workshop-data-licensing)',
chaired by Andrew Su, Monica Munoz-Torres and Raja Mazumder, was a
welcome addition to this year's Biocuration 2019 meeting. Licensing is
an [area of interest for
us](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/gigascience-goes-cc4-a-handy-cut-out-and-keep-guide-to-our-licenses/)
as we very strictly mandate CC0 public domain waivers for our datasets.
Andrew Su explained that, from a data integrator's point of view, data
license restrictions impede progress and are ineffective. Specifically,
the problem relates to a general mis-appropriation of licenses, whereby
researchers add a license of CC-BY to their data because they want
attribution and not because they actually want to have any rights as to
who can reuse their dataset. [Francis Davey of Anderson Law
LLP](http://www.andlaw.eu/team-member/francis-davey/) additionally
presented the legal perspective of ownership of databases, and
highlighted that the CC-BY license, which many academic institutes opt
for by default, is a complex license as it includes a lot of different
options. Niklas Blomberg added that a copyright-free CC0 license would
stimulate "an undergrowth ecosystem of small companies". The solution,
according to Andrew Su is a new type of license, that he describes as
CC0 (+BY) where there is an expectation of attribution, rather than
legal enforcement. This is effectively what we are doing at
*GigaScience*, with our CC0 datasets having a [terms of use
page](http://gigadb.org/site/term) requesting (via research etiquette
and good conduct rather than legal means) attribution.

**Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in Biocuration 
**The Biocuration 2019 workshop on '[**Equality, Diversity, and
Inclusion**](https://www.biocuration2019.org/workshop-equality-diversity-inclusion)'
was chaired by *GigaScience*'s, Mary Ann Tuli. The introductory
[slides](https://f1000research.com/slides/8-527) explained what these
terms mean and how they are being embraced by scientific institutes in
different countries. This was followed by a more in-depth and very
informative [presentation](https://f1000research.com/slides/8-526) by
the invited speaker [Dr Saher
Ahmed](https://www.sanger.ac.uk/people/directory/ahmed-saher), head of
EDI at the [Wellcome Sanger Institute](https://www.sanger.ac.uk/),
Cambridge, UK. Dr. Ahmed discussed gender discrepancies in the
workplace, and highlighted some efforts at Sanger to address these
issues, such as pay transparency, changes to their leave policies, and
creating a family-friendly workplace.

The remaining time was spent on some lively discussion by the 30
attendees on issues such as the gender pay gap, maternity, paternity &
carers leave, cultural differences in working practices and
accessibility. As an outcome of this workshop, attendees agreed there is
a need for the ISB to create an [EDI
subcommittee](https://www.biocuration.org/equality-diversity-and-inclusion-committee/)
and that this workshop should be held at subsequent Biocuration
meetings. The EDI subcommittee is currently being formed, and the exact
roles are to be defined, but they will address issues including a code
of conduct amongst the Society as a whole and at conferences, and
accessibility at conferences and for ISB activities.

::: {#attachment_2845 .wp-caption .alignnone style="width: 610px"}
![](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/EDI_cropped.jpeg){.wp-image-2845
loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2845" width="600" height="393"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/EDI_cropped.jpeg 578w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/EDI_cropped-300x197.jpeg 300w"
sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px"}

Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion at Biocuration 2019. Image credit:
George Georghiou.
:::

***GigaScience*** **leads the way in Discoverable Data 
**During the *Database* session, *GigaScience* Lead Biocurator Chris
Hunter presented on the 'Increased interactivity and improvement to the
*GigaScience* Database' (slides
[here](https://doi.org/10.1093/database/baz016)) and highlighted how web
tools that have been recently incorporated into the web interface are
making data easier to access. The work presented [just
published](https://doi.org/10.1093/database/baz016) in Database
Journal's [Biocuration 2019 virtual
issue](https://academic.oup.com/database/pages/biocuration_virtual_issue#Biocuration%202019)
covering the latest improvements to our [GigaDB](http://gigadb.org/)
repository. Chris also joined Lynn Schriml of the University of Maryland
School of Medicine in a discussion on 'Expanding MlxS Genomic Minimal
Information Standards'. If you were not aware of the [Genomics Standards
Consortium (GSC)](http://gensc.org), or seen [our series of papers from
them](https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/pages/genomic_standards_consortium),
the GSC is a 'grass roots' voluntary effort that aims to make genomic
data discoverable through developing metadata standards that render
datasets computationally comparable. Chris Hunter is on the [GSC
Board](https://press3.mcs.anl.gov/gensc/gsc-board/) and ensures that
*GigaScience* adheres to these metadata standards.

::: {#attachment_2847 .wp-caption .alignnone style="width: 610px"}
![](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_20190409_170813-1024x768.jpg){.wp-image-2847
loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2847" width="600" height="450"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_20190409_170813-1024x768.jpg 1024w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_20190409_170813-300x225.jpg 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/IMG_20190409_170813-768x576.jpg 768w"
sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px"}

Chris Hunter presents improvements to the *GigaScience* Database. Image
courtesy of Dr Sara El-Gebali, EBI.
:::

**FAIRsharing and the importance of Data Standards 
**On a relevant note, keynote speaker and *GigaScience* Editorial Board
Member [Susanna
Assunta-Sansone](https://www.oerc.ox.ac.uk/people/susanna-assunta-sansone)
delivered a presentation on [FAIRsharing](http://fairsharing.org/),
which is a registry of interlinked meta(data) standards, repositories,
knowledgebases, and policies, plus a set of tools and services that
enable discovery and visualisation of these resources. Covering the new
FAIRsharing community network that we [wrote about last
month](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/presenting-the-fairsharing-community-network/),
Susanna highlighted that private sharing of data is more common than
public sharing of data, and this is to the detriment of the research
community as a whole. Of interest, according to Susanna's metrics,
Poland and Germany were significantly better at public data sharing (75%
or greater) whereas the UK and USA did not score as high (\<60%). From a
global perspective I was interested by one of the points raised by
Jiawei Cui of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), who delivered a
talk during the following session on 'Data Standards and Ontologies:
Making data FAIR', and who concluded her presentation with the following
statement:

"Compared with foreign countries, the development of biomedical
scientific data metadata standards is not systematic, and the
application has not reached expectations. Many standards are still in
the exploration stage. Therefore, in the future, we should increase
cooperation with foreign frontier institutions to expand the
construction and application of metadata standards in the biomedical
field."

This coming together in the spirit of cooperation is the very essence of
why the [International Society of
Biocuration](https://www.biocuration.org/) exists, and we look forward
to more collaboration of this nature guided by a growing international
community of biocurators and developers.

The [13th International Biocuration
Conference](https://www.biocuration.org/community/conferences/international-biocuration-meetings/)
will be held in Bar Harbor, Maine, USA from May 17-20, 2020. We look
forward to seeing you there.

**Further Reading** 
Xiao SZ, Armit C, Edmunds S, Goodman L, Li P, Tuli MA, Hunter CI.
Increased interactivity and improvements to the *GigaScience* database,
GigaDB. *Database* (Oxford). 2019 Jan **1**;2019. doi:
[10.1093/database/baz016](https://doi.org/10.1093/database/baz016).

The post [Curators Capture Cambridge. Biocuration
2019](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/biocuration-2019-cambridge/){rel="nofollow"}
appeared first on
[GigaBlog](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog){rel="nofollow"}.

The 12th International

 Biocuration

Conference was held in Cambridge, UK from April 7-10th 2019. As regular participants of the meeting you can read our write-ups of the meeting going back to 2012. This is a forum for biocurators and developers to discuss their work and to promote collaboration.

Curators Capture Cambridge. Biocuration 2019

**FAIRer Sharing via FAIRsharing**

::: {#attachment_2760 .wp-caption .alignright style="width: 310px"}
![FAIRsharing community
network](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/HowFAIRsharingHelpsYou-300x287.png){.size-medium
.wp-image-2760 loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2760" width="300" height="287"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/HowFAIRsharingHelpsYou-300x287.png 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/HowFAIRsharingHelpsYou.png 568w"
sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px"}

Image from FAIRsharing.org.
:::

Our aim at *GigaScience* is to [provide the
means](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/new-look-gigadb/) to open up
and share research data. On top of just making these available via our
([new look](https://doi.org/10.1093/database/baz016)) GigaDB database,
we've been involved with communities that wants to maximize the utility
of these research outputs by making them [FAIR: Findable, Accessible,
Interoperable and Reusable](https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/).
To enable this requires infrastructure and standards, and these efforts,
driven by large organizations or at the grass root level, have been on
the rise since the early 2000s. If anything these efforts have been a
victim of their success, with thousands of community-developed standards
and data repositories available. Although, maybe partly due to the sheer
number of resources, their uptake has been slow and uneven. [Just out in
*Nature Biotechnology*](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-019-0080-8) is a
community driven attempt by the FAIRsharing community network (of which
we are members) to maximize the visibility and adoption of these
standards, databases and repositories. Lead by our [Editorial Board
Member](https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/pages/Editorial_Board)
Susanna-Assunta Sansone, the [new
paper](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-019-0080-8) highlights some of the
roles we all should play to enable this.

In this modern, data-driven age, the people that fund research
(including tax payers) expect greater transparency and reuse of research
data, as well as greater access to and preservation of the data that
supports research findings. To foster a culture of change within the
research community into one where the use of standards, databases and
repositories for FAIRer data is pervasive and seamless, we need to
better promote the existence and value of these resources. First and
foremost, we need to paint an accurate picture of the status quo, of
which this new work covers with [detailed summary
stats](https://fairsharing.org/summary-statistics/?collection=all) of
the current state of play. At the time of writing this there are 1294
standards and 1215 databases listed by the FAIRsharing curators on the
[FAIRsharing.org](http://fairsharing.org/) website.  
![FAIRsharing](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-26-at-17.12.29-1024x342.png){.aligncenter
.wp-image-2755 loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="702" height="234"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-26-at-17.12.29-1024x342.png 1024w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-26-at-17.12.29-300x100.png 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-26-at-17.12.29-768x257.png 768w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-26-at-17.12.29.png 1970w"
sizes="(max-width: 702px) 100vw, 702px"}  
Importantly, several stakeholders can play catalytic roles in fostering
a culture change within the research community where the use of
standards, databases and repositories for FAIRer data is pervasive, and
one of the most crucial highlighted and targeted by these efforts are
journals such as ourselves. We have strict and detailed policies
highlighted in our [editorial policy and reporting guideline
pages](https://academic.oup.com/gigascience/pages/editorial_policies_and_reporting_standards),
submission [checklists and
editorials](https://doi.org/10.1186/s13742-015-0071-8), but as with
terms and condition documents it's easy to miss this information in all
the small print. And it can also quickly become out of date. Providing a
curated and easy to maintain list of publisher, journal and funder
policies provides a home to compare and contrast these, [and our
Editorial and reporting
policies](https://fairsharing.org/recommendation/GigaScience) are one of
the 118 listed on the portal. The interactive nature of the FAIRsharing
platform allows the potential for visualization and more dynamic updates
to specific journal policies. We worked with FAIRsharing to embed their
journal policy visualization widget.  
![FAIRsharing](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-26-at-22.53.00-1024x833.png){.wp-image-2758
.aligncenter loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="701" height="570"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-26-at-22.53.00-1024x833.png 1024w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-26-at-22.53.00-300x244.png 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-26-at-22.53.00-768x625.png 768w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Screen-Shot-2019-03-26-at-22.53.00.png 1128w"
sizes="(max-width: 701px) 100vw, 701px"}  
Other journals may not be so proactive with data policy and practice as
we are, but [FAIRsharing](http://fairsharing.org/) is a great resource
to educate on community best practice, and this new article lobbies all
journals to present data statements and policies to ensure all data
relating to an article or project are as FAIR as possible. The ["Ask
FAIRsharing" wizard](https://fairsharing.org/askFAIRsharing/wizard)
makes it easier for researchers to find the relevant database, policy,
and/or standards for their work. Journals such as ourselves also
encourage authors to cite the standards, database and repositories they
use or develop via the 'how to cite this record' statement, found on
each FAIRsharing record, which includes a DOI. We are in a unique
position where we also have our own data repository, and GigaDB has and
maintains its own FAIRsharing record:
[doi:10.25504/FAIRsharing.rcbwsf](http://dx.doi.org/10.25504/FAIRsharing.rcbwsf).
In our recent paper in [Database
Journal](https://doi.org/10.1093/database/baz016) we also follow good
practice and include the FAIRsharing DOI.

[FAIRsharing](http://fairsharing.org/) is an informative and educational
service vital to reduce the knowledge gap among those involved in
producing, managing, serving, curating, preserving, publishing or
regulating data. As active members of the community we applaud this
work, and recommend our readers utilise these resources and join the
FAIRsharing users and community in making their work more FAIR. To learn
more [read the new paper](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-019-0080-8).

::: {#attachment_2788 .wp-caption .aligncenter style="width: 711px"}
![FAIRsharing community
network](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/41587_2019_80_Fig1_HTML.png){.wp-image-2788
loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2788" width="701" height="334"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/41587_2019_80_Fig1_HTML.png 900w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/41587_2019_80_Fig1_HTML-300x143.png 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/41587_2019_80_Fig1_HTML-768x366.png 768w"
sizes="(max-width: 701px) 100vw, 701px"}

Image by FAIRsharing.org, used under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
:::

**Further Reading**  
Sansone SA et al., FAIRsharing, a cohesive community approach to the
growth in standards, repositories and policies. *Nature Biotechnology*
**37**, p358--367 (2019)
doi:[10.1038/s41587-019-0080-8](https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-019-0080-8)

The post [Presenting the FAIRsharing community
network](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/presenting-the-fairsharing-community-network/){rel="nofollow"}
appeared first on
[GigaBlog](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog){rel="nofollow"}.


FAIRer Sharing via FAIRsharing

Image from FAIRsharing.org. Our aim at

 GigaScience

is to provide the means to open up and share research data. On top of just making these available via our (new look) GigaDB database, we’ve been involved with communities that wants to maximize the utility of these research outputs by making them FAIR: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.

Presenting the FAIRsharing community network

Hans Zauner

***Following FAIR principles is good for your colleagues, it's good for
the community, and it's good for science. But what's in it for the
researcher, in return for committing to open science? A new commentary
in GigaScience shows: A lot.***

::: {#attachment_2154 .wp-caption .alignright style="width: 425px"}
![](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/FAIR_data_principles-1-300x102.jpg){.wp-image-2154
loading="lazy" decoding="async"
aria-describedby="caption-attachment-2154" width="415" height="141"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/FAIR_data_principles-1-300x102.jpg 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/FAIR_data_principles-1.jpg 640w"
sizes="(max-width: 415px) 100vw, 415px"}

graphic: Sangya Pundir, CC-BY 4.0
:::

[It's easy to see how doing science in a FAIR
(]{style="font-weight: 400;"}**F**[indable,
]{style="font-weight: 400;"}**A**[ccessible,
]{style="font-weight: 400;"}**I**[nteroperable and
]{style="font-weight: 400;"}**R**[eproducible) way benefits the research
community and society at large. From the perspective of a stressed-out
researcher though, already pressured into doing more experiments and
analyses than can be crammed into a working day, isn't Open Science
first and foremost an extra burden? Carefully keeping track of heaps of
metadata, for example, doesn't sound fun at
all.]{style="font-weight: 400;"}

[Javier Quilez *et al*., in a commentary
]{style="font-weight: 400;"}[[published this week in
]{style="font-weight: 400;"}*[GigaScience]{style="font-weight: 400;"}*[,]{style="font-weight: 400;"}](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/gix100)[
make a strong case for the contrary: Yes, Open Science means following a
set of principles. Yes, it means not taking shortcuts when it comes to
documentation. And yes, there's some bureaucracy and planning involved.
What really counts, however, is that by following FAIR principles, labs
are rewarded with research projects that run smoothly and efficiently --
and, most of all, they are publishing results that are more reliable and
reproducible.]{style="font-weight: 400;"}

## A story of two samples

To prove their point, Quilez *et al*. tell a didactic story of two
similar samples, generated by Pedro and Linda, respectively. Linda's
sample emerges from an open and FAIR pipeline,  Pedro's however... not
so. *"The life of b1913e6c1_51720e9cf was simple and fruitful, while
that of T47D_rep2 was full of accidents and sorrow"*, as the authors
write.

[Trouble for T47D_rep2 starts brewing when the project changes hands,
and a new member of the lab tried to make sense of it all. Wait, there
are four files named 7D_rep2 in different directories? And where's the
code that was used to generate plots? That's just the beginning of a
series of headaches, and the project is descending into a
nightmare.]{style="font-weight: 400;"}

[Linda's project, on the other hand, is progressing smoothly and
quickly, even after it's been taken over by a colleague. That's because
Linda and her colleagues filled in metadata in a dedicated form, used
tools such as Jupyter notebooks  and followed FAIR
principles.]{style="font-weight: 400;"}

[![](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/1xvdc4-300x298.jpg){.alignleft
.size-medium .wp-image-2153 loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="300"
height="298"
srcset="http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/1xvdc4-300x298.jpg 300w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/1xvdc4-150x150.jpg 150w, http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/1xvdc4.jpg 503w"
sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px"}At
]{style="font-weight: 400;"}*[GigaScience]{style="font-weight: 400;"}*[,
our message to authors is: Be like Linda. Let's commit to FAIR
principles, together. We're doing what we can to make it  easy for our
authors. For example, we are collaborating with protocols.io and we are
]{style="font-weight: 400;"}[[experimenting with Code
Ocean]{style="font-weight: 400;"}](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/data-intensive-software-publishing-sailing-the-code-ocean-qa-with-ruibang-luo/)[,
a cloud-based computational reproducibility platform. We also have an
open repository,
]{style="font-weight: 400;"}[[GigaDB]{style="font-weight: 400;"}](http://gigadb.org)[,
with  dedicated data curators who help
]{style="font-weight: 400;"}*[GigaScience]{style="font-weight: 400;"}*[
authors to organise and share their data -- ensuring it is reusable. And
in order to keep up with the rising number of submissions, we have
recently increased our team of data
curators.]{style="font-weight: 400;"}

[From our beginnings five years ago (see our recent
]{style="font-weight: 400;"}[[5th birthday
editorial]{style="font-weight: 400;"}](https://doi.org/10.1093/gigascience/gix064)[),
we were convinced that, without full data and reproducible workflows,
research articles are not science -- they are just advertisement for
science. As participating authors in the
]{style="font-weight: 400;"}[[original FAIR principles announcement
]{style="font-weight: 400;"}](http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18)[it's
been amazing to see the FAIR concept spread across the world
(]{style="font-weight: 400;"}[[including
China]{style="font-weight: 400;"}](https://www.slideshare.net/GigaScience/scott-edmunds-fair-or-unfair-principled-publishing-for-data)[,
with ]{style="font-weight: 400;"}[[Scott presenting on
them]{style="font-weight: 400;"}](http://ir.las.ac.cn/handle/12502/8890)[
at the Chinese Academy of Sciences open access week event last year)
 and be taken up and promoted by governments and
]{style="font-weight: 400;"}[[even the
G20.]{style="font-weight: 400;"}](https://www.dtls.nl/g20-endorse-fair-principles/)[
Work is now underway on FAIR metrics to make the principles more usable
and actionable, and on top of these efforts this informal and less
abstract example will help make the case to researchers of their
utility.]{style="font-weight: 400;"}

## See you at FORCE2017 in Berlin next week?

[As Quilez et al.'s story of two samples shows, clever tools and
technology can help to advance Open Science, and
]{style="font-weight: 400;"}*[GigaScience]{style="font-weight: 400;"}*[
is keen to learn about and experiment with new
ideas.]{style="font-weight: 400;"}

That's why we are excited to attend next week's
[FORCE2017](https://www.force2017.org/) meeting in Berlin, to meet
innovators in Research Communication and e-Scholarship. Many FAIR-topics
are due be covered in what is the biennial gathering of most of the FAIR
community. We are proud to be one of the sponsors of the event, and we
have been actively participating since 2013, when it was still called
"Beyond the PDF". To get into FORCE mood, watch the talk our Executive
Editor Scott Edmunds gave there in 2015:

The post [Open Science is FAIRly
easy](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog/open-science-is-fairly-easy/){rel="nofollow"}
appeared first on
[GigaBlog](http://gigasciencejournal.com/blog){rel="nofollow"}.


Following FAIR principles is good for your colleagues, it’s good for the community, and it’s good for science. But what’s in it for the researcher, in return for committing to open science?

Messages de Rogue Scholar

Entwicklung eines Open-Science-Indikators am Beispiel des FAIR Data Dashboards der Charité

FAIRsharing Guestpost: What Criteria Matters with Data Repository Selection?

Curators Capture Cambridge. Biocuration 2019

Presenting the FAIRsharing community network

Open Science is FAIRly easy