Fair-by-design in practice

Data are the main underlying substrate of the research process. It is imperative to facilitate the collection, creation, analysis, and discussion of data to generate new knowledge and improve research.

FAIR, an acronym for Findable, Accurate, Interoperable and Reusable indicates the main features that a data ecosystem must possess to achieve this objective.

Therefore, to create a digital platform based on FAIR principles on a multicentric and heterogenous consortium of laboratories it is crucial to analyze the research process of every member to identify the differences and, more importantly, the similarities between them, creating a shared and useful data management plan that homogenize and streamline the data collection and sharing process.

To assess these processes an interview was carried out within the researchers of Pathogen Readiness Platform (PRP@CERIC) project. Three main steps were identified that are shared with all the laboratories: 1) the sample acquisition/creation entry phase, 2) the sample analysis and data elaboration phase, and 3) the research results and data sharing phase.

The FAIRification activity intervene on these steps through a combination of methodologies and digital infrastructure software: 1) the adoption and testing of forms and metadata acceptance repositories. 2) The introduction of a shared electronic notebook (adapting the opensource ELABFTW software), integrated with automatic analysis pipelines and laboratory specific data management plans. 3) The customization of an opensource platform (NOMAD OASIS) that supports direct connection with the journal publications, external databases and uses persistent and globally unique identifiers, (i.e., Digital Object Identifiers, DOI) to maintain a direct link to the real data on the platform. This approach aims at shifting the burden of implementing a FAIR data ecosystem towards automatic processes that follow the natural internal research process. It will use real cases from the different labs to test the implementation and usability.

Speaker: Marco Prenassi, RIT (Area Science Park)