Globally, communities are monitoring air quality, tracking biodiversity, and mapping disease vectors to fill critical gaps where official monitoring networks fall short. The data collected is powerful, the ambition is real, but the integration into traditional research and policy systems remains a challenge, especially technically, legally, and semantically. At RDA’s 26th Plenary, this Birds of a Feather session on Thursday, 19 March, 07:00–08:30 UTC dives into a deceptively simple question: what would it take to truly make citizen-generated data FAIR?
The session will explore whether the RDA community is ready to establish an Interest Group dedicated to systematically tackling these challenges. Through short talks and open discussion, speakers will share practical lessons from global open-data platforms, citizen science projects linked to the SDGs, air-quality monitoring networks, and other large community-led initiatives. The aim is not just to talk, but to build a community that can turn FAIR principles into real, workable solutions for citizen-generated data. If open science is to live up to its name, it must meaningfully include citizen-science data. This session is a step toward making that inclusion interoperable and scalable. The session is a collaboration of the CSAQ CoP of the Citizen Science Global Partnership, the CODATA Task Group for Citizen-Generated Data for the SDGs, and OpenAQ.