FAIR-IMPACT identifies practices, policies, tools and technical specifications to guide researchers, repository managers, research performing organisations, policy makers and citizen scientists towards a FAIR data management cycle. The focus is on persistent identifiers (PIDs), metadata, ontologies, metrics, certification and interoperability, starting with real-life use cases on social sciences and humanities, the photon and neutron sciences, life sciences and agri-food and environmental sciences.
Browse below some of the use cases FAIR-IMPACT is supporting
FAIR vocabularies in DANS Data Stations
DANS (Data Archiving and Networked Services) improved the FAIRness (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) of its repository service by transitioning from a generic repository system, EASY, to four discipline-specific repositories called "Data Stations." Each Data Station is curated with relevant communities, enables the addition of custom metadata fields and discipline specific controlled vocabularies, improving metadata quality and interoperability. Data is mapped to and can be exported in multiple formats like DublinCore, DataCite, and Schema.org. The new Data Stations use Dataverse software, as opposed to EASY, which was based on the FEDORA system and became outdated.
Semantic Artefacts Alignment for Improving Interoperability in Astronomy
The astronomy community is structured in several sub-communities, with matured but siloed semantic artefact ecosystems. This use case brings all semantic artefacts in the same catalogue. The goal is to improve the semantic interoperability between the astronomy communities, and in turn the semantic artefact FAIRness.
Enabling interoperability between AgroPortal and PHIS information system data repository for enhanced phenomics data annotation and exchange
The goal of this use case is to illustrate the benefit of using AgroPortal ontologies to describe, annotate and structure phenomics data within the PHIS platform, an open source information system for Plant Phenomics.
Enhance the semantic functionally of the national Earth & Environmental Data Repository by integrating it with the EarthPortal
The aim of this use case is to improve the semantic functionality of EaSyData by connecting it to the EarthPortal. By combining the vocabularies displayed in the EarthPortal and EaSy Data vocabulary with associated services such as the annotator, researchers can have access to a more comprehensive set of tools to specify metadata. This will allow to propose new ways for the researcher to specify metadata and thus improving the semantic capabilities of EaSyData.
Leveraging AgroPortal ontologies to ease metadata completion and data discovery in Data INRAE
This use case aims to connect AgroPortal with Data INRAE. AgroPortal is a semantic artefacts catalog for agri-food and related domains. The goal of the connection is to facilitate the control vocabularies use for keyword completion.
Improving ecological (meta)data FAIRness through semantic services: integration of EcoPortal in LifeWatch Italy new platforms
EcoPortal supports the scientific community in managing semantic artefacts in the ecological domain and employs the Ontology FAIRness Evaluator (O’FAIRe) tool for FAIRness assessment. Challenges addressed in this use case include enhancing metadata annotation with FAIR semantic artefacts. The expected impacts of the integration between EcoPortal and the new Data Portal and Metadata Catalogue of LifeWatch Italy encompass easier ecological data discovery, annotation, machine-actionable meta(data), and a push towards Linked Open Data.
PIDs as a cornerstone in actualising the FAIR principles within the LifeWatch infrastructure
LifeWatch ERIC is a European Research Infrastructure Consortium dedicated to advancing e-Science research in biodiversity and ecosystem studies, supporting global sustainability challenges. LifeWatch ERIC's EcoPortal plays a crucial role in ecological research, providing a Semantic Artefact Repository that consolidates core ontologies, domain-specific vocabularies, and reference lists. It offers essential services to facilitate seamless discovery and integration, exemplifying our commitment to advancing scientific collaboration and knowledge management.
Change triggers impacting PID generation for sensitive data within the Social Sciences
The UK Data Service (UKDS) is a partnership between the Universities of Essex, Manchester, UCL, Edinburgh and Jisc and the UK service provider to the Consortium of Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA). The focus of this use case is on the research ‘studies’ of sensitive nature deposited at the UK Data Service and the subsequent derived data products. The sensitivity issue is the handling of information containing directly identifiable personal data or data that has the capacity to lead to reidentification, either through related variables within the dataset or through linkage with other data. We need to consider the implications involved in handling sensitive data for PID management and associated kernel metadata of a related identifier/object, e.g. for a repository identifier (“is currently approved to hold sensitive data”) or a researcher identifier (“has current credentials for accessing sensitive data”).
INRAE - Providing a recommendations document on PIDs usages
INRAE is the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment. It proposes, through research, innovation and support for public policies, new directions to support the emergence of sustainable agricultural and food systems. INRAE is the first French institute to have a Department for Open Science. The objective: is to respond to the challenges linked to the opening of scientific research in a context of digital development and increasingly strong expectations from society.
Advancing access interoperability with ODRL
The UK Data Service (UKDS) is a partnership between the Universities of Essex, Manchester, UCL, Edinburgh and Jisc and the UK service provider to the Consortium of Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA). The focus of this use case is on enabling machine actors to better interpret the currently ambiguous semantics of digital objects’ access and usage conditions and secondly, to provide more specific guidance on how to encapsulate the definition and execution of access and usage conditions in FAIR signposting practices. The latter reference “license” as a link type but apart from referencing natural language license statements, this mechanism currently provides little scope for subsequent machine-actionable negotiation and execution of access/usage conditions for a digital object.
Referencing software source code artifacts: identifiers for digital object
Software Heritage addresses the challenge of dealing with the different level of granularity of software artifacts: source code files, source trees, commits, and other objects typically found in version control systems. SWHID is a PID, independent of the development platform or technology, that can be computed from the designated object itself without needing a register to maintain the correspondence. The proposal is to advance the use of SWHID for referencing software source code artifacts.
Implementation of EOSC Interoperability Framework at STFC
UKRI is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) is one of the constituent research councils of UKRI. It supports research in astronomy, physics and space science, and operates world-class research facilities for the UK. STFC provides access to world-leading, large-scale facilities across a range of physical and life sciences, enabling research, innovation and skills training in these areas. These facilities include the ISIS neutron and muon source. This use case will explore the semantic practices adopted in this institution and the compliance with the EOSC IF recommendations. Furthermore, in the future, it will help us to explore semantic practices in other use cases.
PIDs for instruments in photon and neutron facilities science. Use case by STFC
The proposal of this use case is to advance the use of PIDs for instruments, such as instruments, devices, softwares and services, in the context of photon and neutron facilities (research infrastructures). This is an area of great interest in the community, for example assisting with assessing the impact of individual instruments. The RDA has a Working Group on Persistent Identification of Instruments that takes a cross-domain approach, but its specific application to PaN has not been fully explored.
Assessing FAIRness for Earth and Environmental Data. Use case by Dataterra and PANGAEA
In this use case, we intend to discuss potential FAIR metrics for the Earth and Environmental Sciences community (here: solid earth and oceans excluding atmosphere and biosphere) in collaboration with projects such as FAIR-EASE, BlueCloud and ENVRI-FAIR. For this purpose we want to analyze the FAIR habits of this community to find out if there are similarities in the use of e.g. identifiers, standards and vocabularies that justify deriving their own FAIR metrics from the existing FAIRsFAIR metrics. We will investigate existing technical interfaces for metadata exchange and use FAIR implementation profiles of relevant data archives.
Providing documentation on harmonised and citable PIDs for subsets of protected data. Use case by EMBL-EBI
European Bioinformatics Institute is Europe’s largest provider of public biomolecular data resources. The institute is co-located with Elixir Hub and partnered up in many relevant EU projects, among others EOSC-Life, FREYA, and BY-COVID. This use case will explore PID practices in relation to complex data citation and sensitive data for the life science domain, and provide documentation on best practices to be adopted across domains. In addition to supporting life sciences, EMBL-EBI is increasingly also collaborating with other domains, e.g. social sciences in the context of Covid-19 research. EMBL-EBI provides consistent access to life science data by leveraging on compact identifiers through the Identifiers.org resolution service. This service will be fine-tuned during the course of the project to ensure alignment with community FAIR practices and the broader EOSC context.
Encouraging and supporting researchers in producing FAIR computational workflows. Use case by University of Manchester
This use case is based around the University of Manchester’s work with Persistent Identifiers in data production workflows via its involvement in the WorkflowHub - a registry of computational FAIR workflows. WorkflowHub is sponsored by the European RI Cluster EOSC-Life, the European Research Infrastructure ELIXIR and multiple EOSC projects (BY-COVID, BioDT and EuroScienceGateway). Its initial users were from within the life sciences working with COVID-19 workflows, but is now used by over 140 research groups and projects across disciplines.