WorldFAIR+

CODATA is expanding and sustain sustaining the vision and methodology of WorldFAIR through the WorldFAIR+ programme. The purpose is to provide practical guidance and technical recommendations to help ensure that the data needed for interdisciplinary research is FAIR and has maximum utility.

CODATA is seeking partners around the world for this initiative, to explore case studies; to implement, refine and extend the CDIF, and to further improve the WorldFAIR methodology.

‘WorldFAIR+’ will aim to achieve the following objectives:

• Refining the WorldFAIR methodology, particularly concerning the use of FIPs and the CDIF.
• Expanding the number of case studies (or petals in the WorldFAIR flower diagram and logo).
• Exploring and enabling implementations of CDIF, improving the model and demonstrating the benefits of the approach.
• Securing funding in various countries of a suite of projects implementing the methodology.
• Establishing one or more International Programme Offices to coordinate the activities and provide secretariat support and expertise.

Please contact CODATA Executive Director Simon Hodson (simon[at]codata.org) if you are interested in exploring participation in this exciting new programme of activity.

Below, we provide further detail about this initiative.

How will WorldFAIR+ work?

What is WorldFAIR+? How will it work? How can you get involved? Below we describe our current thinking of CODATA and partners about WorldFAIR+ and the status of our efforts to engage with new potential partners and a broader range of domain case studies.

We believe that there is sufficient interest and excitement in WorldFAIR, and sufficient progress for us to seek to expand and sustain the initiative.  We are very keen to continue our excellent collaboration with the existing partners and to expand the initiative to include new partners.  How do we do this?

WorldFAIR+ is envisaged as a framework for collaboration with a number of parallel pieces of project funding: a federation of parallel but linked projects and case studies, with CODATA providing a coordinating function.

There are good reasons for taking this approach.  The funding that led to WorldFAIR was quite exceptional: the EC allowed us to have beneficiaries around the world in countries not covered by collaboration agreements with the Horizon Europe programme.  This is not the normal modus operandi for national or regional funders.  We will continue to make the case that the success of WorldFAIR demonstrates the benefits of such international funding, but in the short term we cannot rely on a single project to continue the WorldFAIR work.

In order to expand and sustain the initiative, therefore, we envisage a series of parallel projects, addressing ongoing WorldFAIR objectives, and benefitting from coordination and shared technical expertise.  This would be underpinned by a framework of documentation and agreements detailing the approach, expectations of partners etc.

What will WorldFAIR+ do?

Five priorities exist for ongoing work under the WorldFAIR+ banner

1. Case studies advancing the implementation of the FAIR principles.  The work of the case studies and their engagement within their domain is essential to the approach and incredibly valuable. Therefore, we would welcome new case studies that would help us understand the requirements of domains not hitherto covered.  Extending the metaphor that led to our logo, these would be ‘new petals’.  These could include fields of research that are completely new to WorldFAIR, or those that are related to existing case studies; the work could be undertaken by new partners or existing partners. With such case studies we would intend to iterate an improved and refined version of the WorldFAIR approach.
2. FAIR Implementation Profiles (FIPs). The exercises around the FAIR Implementation Profiles was extremely valuable.  Further improvements in the tooling are needed, including visualisation and an API, and WorldFAIR+ will aim to help support these improvements if possible.
3. Cross-Domain Interoperability Framework (CDIF).  The further development, refinement and extension of CDIF is a major priority for WorldFAIR+.  This will require additional technical effort and prototype implementations with case studies in order to improve and extend the recommendation and CDIF profiles.
4. Interoperability frameworks, FAIR recommendations and implementation plans.  The key outputs of WorldFAIR+ will be recommendations and implementation plans developed by the case studies for the communities they represent.  These build on and are assisted by the steps above and reference the CDIF where possible.  The simultaneous exploration of domain and cross-domain solutions lies at the heart of the WorldFAIR+ approach.

The need for a coordinating and synthesis function

There will need to be a Secretariat for the initiative, to coordinate activities and ensure the added value of collaboration.  The coordinating and synthesis function includes providing overall direction for the initiative; overseeing timely production of technical documentation, reports and other communications, and ensuring robust quality of outputs; arranging meetings and opportunities to exchange ideas; ensuring synthesis of results, outputs and recommendations; and directing the CDIF work, the coordinated development of FAIR Implementation Profiles (FIPs) and other activities.  We envisage the CODATA team continuing to play the lead role in coordinating the initiative and the technical work on CDIF and therefore we aim to expand the CODATA team to support the new initiative.  As well as seeking project funding and other sources of income, we hope that some partners in the initiative will be able to provide effort in kind or direct funding to enable this expansion.

How to get involved in WorldFAIR+?

The CODATA team has been successful in obtaining project funding and the new projects considered as contributing to WorldFAIR+ are listed below.  We will keep exploring options and we are keen to discuss any opportunities that may arise.

Beyond such new project funding it is possible for organisations to engage with and support the WorldFAIR+ initiative.  We envisage the following possibilities (these are presented in order of increasing levels of commitment):

1. An organisation dedicates effort to provide a new case study, to deepen an existing case study, or to undertake a test implementation of CDIF (Priorities 1-3 above).  The work would be resourced by the organisation in question from internal or project funds.  The challenge here is how to resource the necessary coordination function and the ongoing technical support and work on CDIF.  Nevertheless, we envisage being able to include a small number of such case studies and aim to increase that number as and when increased resource is obtained for the coordinating function and technical work.
2. In addition to the above, the organisation provides dedicated staff effort (in kind) to the coordinating function and/or assist with further CDIF development.  This contribution would be resourced by the organisation in question from internal or project funds.  To contribute to the coordinating function, the dedicated staff effort would need to bring project management and organisational capacity, as well as intellectual input to the synthesis and production work across outputs.  To contribute to the CDIF development, the effort would need technical expertise and good knowledge of metadata standards and semantic technologies.  The dedicated staff would join the CDIF Working Group; they could also engage with pilot implementations (Priority 3 above).
3. Finally, in addition to the above, the organisation could provide funds to CODATA to support the coordinating function and/or assist with further CDIF development.  Although, we think a lot can be achieved in a collaborative framework, with parallel sets of resourcing for case studies and contributions of effort for the coordinating function and CDIF development, it will be necessary to expand the CODATA secretariat to ensure the efficient and productive development of the initiative as it expands.

It goes without saying that the larger number of partners we identify that are able to participate at the C and B level of commitments, the better the initiative will function.

A number of the WorldFAIR case study partners have indicated interest in participating in WorldFAIR+.  These include chemistry (IUPAC), nanomaterials (with the possibility of a PARC sub-grant), geochemistry (through OneGeochemistry) and a new Geophysics Project at AuScope), agricultural biodiversity (subject to funding), cultural heritage (subject to funding).

Additionally, discussions have already been undertaken with a number of new partners for WorldFAIR+, including the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC), the Helmholtz Metadata Collaboration (HMC), The Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives (CESSDA) , the Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information (KISTI), the African Open Science Platform (AOSP), the Malaysian Open Science Platform, the LIFES Institute in Leiden, the CivicDataLab India, and others.

The WorldFAIR methodology, the use of FIPs, the emerging CDIF and the case study approach are seen as strengths, so there is considerable interest: there will be no shortage of potential partners, additional case studies, or petals (level A). The challenge will be finding partners at Level C and B, augmented by project funding.  

CODATA will work with existing and potential partners to put in place agreements (in the form of a simple MoU or similar) and a description of the work to be undertaken and the mutual expectations of partners.

Projects Secured: WorldFAIR+

The CODATA team has worked hard to secure funding for new projects to be part of the WorldFAIR+ initiative.  These are the following:

1. “Data Science Without Borders”: CODATA is a partner in this Wellcome-funded project which builds on the work of WorldFAIR WP07. The project includes CDIF implementation (particularly data interoperability/integration and privacy management) to enable federated analysis across four African health research centres (Kenya, Ethiopia, Senegal, Cameroon). Three years. Underway.  Africa.
2. “FAIR Data and Emergencies: CODATA will coordinate a project funded by ISC applying the WorldFAIR methodology and implementing CDIF components in emergencies and cascading hazards case studies on earthquake data (Turkey) and flooding / cholera (Malawi). 18 months. Started 1 September 2024. Africa and Turkey.
3. “CDIF-4-XAS”: an OSCARS project cascading grant, to implement, test and refine the CDIF, to prepare X-ray absorption spectroscopy data for interdisciplinary reuse. Two years. Started 1 October 2024. Europe (Germany and UK, but with global relevance).
4. “CLIMATE-ADAPT4EOSC”: CODATA is a member of the consortium for a major four-year project on FAIR data and innovative services for climate adaptation. A central part of the project will be the implementation and further development of the CDIF and related tooling. The project comprises three case studies: urban heat (Greece); oceans / coastal management data (Portugal); clay soils / hydrology / built environment / insurance (France). Four years. Starts 1 Jan 2025. Europe (Greece, Portugal, France).
5. “FAIR Principles implementation for DDE”: Implementation of FAIR principles, alignment of IUGS CGI standards with CDIF, for cross-domain research topics and data reuse in geology.  Three years.  From Jan 2025.  Global.  Funding from IUGS.

 

Page last updated: 2024-11-30.