FAIR Data & Good Practice of Science

At the end of June, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Twente’s Dig­i­tal Com­pe­tence Cen­ter (DCC) host­ed its third the­mat­ic ses­sion on ‘FAIR Data & Good Prac­tice of Sci­ence’. 

The the­mat­ic ses­sion on ‘FAIR Data & Good Prac­tice of Sci­ence’ aimed to raise aware­ness of The FAIR Prin­ci­ples and the impor­tance of good sci­en­tif­ic prac­tice. 

In recent years, there has been a tremen­dous increase in the amount of schol­ar­ly research data gen­er­at­ed, and there is an urgent need to sup­port the reuse of such data in the dig­i­tal era, as stat­ed by Wilkin­son et al. 

The FAIR Prin­ci­ples pro­vide guide­lines for researchers to make their research data Find­able, Acces­si­ble, Inter­op­er­a­ble and Reusable by humans and machines as ini­ti­at­ed by Force 11. Three guest speak­ers were invit­ed to the the­mat­ic ses­sion to explore these prin­ci­ples in more detail. 

A whistle-stop tour of the FAIR Principles

The ses­sion kicked-off with ‘An intro­duc­tion to the FAIR Prin­ci­ples’ by Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor Luiz Boni­no da Sil­va San­tos from the Ser­vices and Cyber­se­cu­ri­ty group at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Twente. Luiz is also a co-author of ‘The FAIR Guid­ing Prin­ci­ples for sci­en­tif­ic data man­age­ment and stew­ard­ship’, a Nature paper that has been cit­ed 4,770 times since its pub­li­ca­tion in 2016, and the Inter­na­tion­al Tech­nol­o­gy Coor­di­na­tor at GO FAIR. 

Luiz took ses­sion par­tic­i­pants on a whis­tle-stop tour of the FAIR prin­ci­ples from their estab­lish­ment to their cur­rent sta­tus. Since the FAIR Prin­ci­ples were first intro­duced in 2014 dur­ing a work­shop organ­ised by the Dutch Tech­cen­tre for Life Sci­ences and the Nether­lands e‑Science Cen­ter, their promi­nence has grown immense­ly. The FAIR prin­ci­ples have formed the basis of sev­er­al major organ­i­sa­tions, such as the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion (Euro­pean Open Sci­ence Cloud), and they have been explic­it­ly men­tioned in the G7 and G20 sum­mit reports, demon­strat­ing their increas­ing sig­nif­i­cance.

Dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion, Luiz high­light­ed the impor­tance of data man­age­ment and explained that data sci­en­tists typ­i­cal­ly spend the vast major­i­ty (~80%) of their time col­lect­ing, clean­ing and organ­is­ing data, leav­ing very lit­tle time for analy­sis and draw­ing con­clu­sions. He con­tin­ued to explain that the FAIR prin­ci­ples empha­sise machine-action­able (meta)data which improves the capac­i­ty of com­put­ers to find, access, inter­op­er­ate and reuse data. In turn, this reduces the bur­den on humans and leads to more effi­cient research work­flows and time to spend on data analy­sis and inter­pre­ta­tion. 

View Luiz’s slides

FAIR Data in Citizen Science

Dr. Michelle Kip and Dr. Ria Wolko­rte from the Health Tech­nol­o­gy & Ser­vices Research group at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Twente shared their per­son­al expe­ri­ence of striv­ing to achieve FAIR Data in their cit­i­zen sci­ence research and how they became aware of FAIR data as grantees of 4TU.ResearchData’s FAIR Data Fund. 

Michelle and Ria are post­doc­tor­al researchers work­ing with­in the TOPFIT Cit­i­zen­Lab, a large con­sor­tium of knowl­edge insti­tu­tions, health­care orga­ni­za­tions, com­pa­nies and patients. Their research project focus­es on improv­ing the health and well­be­ing of patients through ‘cit­i­zen sci­ence’, a trans­par­ent and open prac­tice which involves cit­i­zens as an inte­gral part of the research process. 

Their research involves the col­lec­tion of qual­i­ta­tive data (inter­views, focus groups, co-cre­ation, sur­veys) and quan­ti­ta­tive data (diaries, activ­i­ty track­ers, sur­veys) about patients with Rheuma­toid Arthri­tis. 

Michelle and Ria are explor­ing ways to make their diverse range of per­son­al data FAIR. They applied for the FAIR Data Fund to help increase the qual­i­ty and val­ue of the data; to make it reusable over an extend­ed peri­od of time; and, to increase the impact and vis­i­bil­i­ty of their research. 

There can, how­ev­er, be chal­lenges in mak­ing cit­i­zen sci­ence research data FAIR and, par­tic­u­lar­ly, per­son­al health data from patients. Michelle men­tioned the impor­tance of hav­ing a sup­port net­work to help through­out the process and have reg­u­lar con­tact with their fac­ul­ty data stew­ard, Qian Zhang, and the wider 4TU.ResearchData com­mu­ni­ty. 

Writ­ten by Zafer Öztürk and Con­nie Clare