University of Manchester
Plenary lecture
FAIRy stories: tales from building the FAIR Research Commons
Findable Accessable Interoperable Reusable. The “FAIR Principles” for research data, software, computational workflows, scripts, or any kind of Research Object is a mantra; a method; a meme; a myth; a mystery. For the past 15 years I have been working on FAIR in a range of projects and initiatives in the Life Sciences as we try to build the FAIR Research Commons.Some are top-down like the European Research Infrastructures ELIXIR, ISBE and IBISBA, and the NIH Data Commons. Some are bottom-up, supporting FAIR for investigator lead projects (FAIRDOM), biodiversity analytics (BioVel), and FAIR drug discovery (Open PHACTS, FAIRplus). Some have become movements, like Bioschemas, the Common Workflow Language and Research Objects. Others focus on cross-cutting approaches in reproducibility, computational workflows, metadata representation and scholarly sharing & publication. In this talk I will relate a series of FAIRy tales. Some of them are Grimm. There are villains and heroes. Some have happy endings. All have morals.