Outcomes of the 2nd open call for repositories & service providers

The FAIR Principles focus on characteristics of digital objects that make them Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. Achieving and maintaining those characteristics depends on the individuals and organisations that create, store, curate, and preserve the objects. These activities are 'FAIR-enabling’, and repositories and data service providers play an important role in facilitating them.

FAIR-IMPACT helped repositories and data service providers assess your current FAIR-enabling capabilities and develop action plans to improve them. We introduced services and tools that address a wide range of topics, such as:

• Repository policy, e.g. ACME-FAIR, Data support policy for photon and neutron science;
• Making objects in the repository more FAIR, e.g. CESSDA Data Archiving Guide, FAIR Cookbook;
• Automated FAIR assessment, e.g. F-UJI, Framework for assessing FAIR services;
• Repository certification, e.g. CoreTrustSeal+FAIRenabling Capability Maturity Model, FAIRsFAIR repository support.  

We went beyond the formal FAIR principles and also include guidance for effective strategies to engage with your community and position your organisation in the research landscape.

The support programme with selected participants started in September 2024 as a series of virtual workshops where we introduced key concepts around FAIR and how they may apply to your organisation.

The virtual workshops showcased specific tools and approaches that may help you to implement the FAIR principles in a practical sense and offered a chance to do some virtual sight-seeing’ with FAIR-IMPACT partners to see how they implement certain FAIR-enabling practices. Participants carried out a supported self-assessment of their current capabilities and developed action plans to become more FAIR-enabling that are tailored to their needs and ambition. Participants received one-to-one support from the FAIR-IMPACT support team over a period of seven months to develop and implement their action plans. 

Enabling knowledge exchange is one of the key objectives of the support programme. To this end, in two workshops participants shared their experiences with peers in the support programme. The programme wrapped-up with a personal exit interview that resulted in a co-authored ‘FAIR Implementation Story’, published in our Zenodo community, to share the unique experience of each participant and enable networking with the wider community.

The minimum effort expected from participants was around fifty hours for the whole programme, depending on the specific resources necessary to implement and input needed. To benefit most from the programme, representatives from the participating repositories brought expertise in policy, engagement, and repository technology, split across a maximum of three people.

Successful applicants to the Repositories and Data service Providers Support Programme

• Femmy Admiraal, Center of Digital Scholarship, University Library, Leiden University
• Victor Bacu, Technical University of Cluj Napoca
• Bernarda Korez, University of Maribor Library
• Mari Elisa Kuusniemi, Helsinki University Library
• Ilona Lang, RWTH Aachen University
• Aljaz Maslo, EMSO ERIC
• Carmen Mihai, IMAGO-MOL Cluster
• Tomasz Miksa, TU Wien
• Óscar Sánchez, Fundación Dialnet. Universidad de La Rioja

The call is now closed! Do you have any questions? Write to opencalls [ at ] fair-impact.eu

Details of the support programme