From 24-28 October, in the context of Leiden 2022: European City of Science, there will be a ‘Hotzone’ week dedicated to FAIR and specifically to FAIR Digital Objects as the core ‘machine actionable units of information’ necessary to build an Internet and Web of FAIR data and services. The week features two closely related events: the 2nd FAIR Convergence Symposium (24-26 October) and the 1st International Conference on FAIR Digital Objects (26-28 October). The two events will explore the contention that the FAIR principles, and their application through FAIR Digital Objects, are important steps to maximise the machine actionability of data and other information.
Co-organised by CODATA and GO FAIR, building on the success of the first event in 2020, the 2nd FAIR Convergence Symposium will explore the state of art in FAIR implementation across a range of research domains and initiatives. Priority will be given to interactive and working meetings for a set of parallel activities which are emerging as the core of convergence around FAIR and which include, but are not limited to: FAIR Implementation Profiles; the digital representation of units of measurement; FAIR vocabularies, terminologies, ontologies and other semantic artefacts; working models for a core interoperability framework and case studies from the EU funded international WorldFAIR project (starting June 2022) and wider initiatives; cooperation, alignment and interoperability among major Open Science infrastructures, and so on. The results of these meetings will be summarised and presented at a transition event bridging the two conferences.
Taking place on the evening of Wednesday 26 October, in the magnificent main hall of the new Naturalis Biodiversity Center, as a plenary meeting, followed by a reception the transition event will also include a presentation of the Open Science Cloud Executives Roundtable (OSCER) and a proposed statement on the role of FAIR and FAIR Digital Objects in achieving the promise of effective Open Science infrastructures. The draft ‘Leiden Declaration on FAIR Digital Objects’ will also be debated.
The transition event will pass the FAIR hotzone week baton to the 1st International Conference on FAIR Digital Objects. Bringing together for the first time at this scale key scientific, industry, and science-policy stakeholders, the conference will present and discuss practical implementation frameworks of FDO architectures and successful (working implementations) case studies where FDOs have been implemented. The conference will also propose mechanisms to endorse technical specifications and initiate needed national & international formal standardisation processes as well as document and propose solutions that facilitate global adoption of FDOs across science and society. The 1st International Conference on FAIR Digital Objects, and the Hotzone week as a whole, will conclude with the formal signing and publication of the ‘Leiden Declaration on FAIR Digital Objects’.
The two events will be managed separately and will launch dedicated websites in the coming weeks. Follow the pages and communications of the events’ organisers, the FAIR Digital Objects Forum, CODATA and GO FAIR for updates.
The Hotzone Week on FAIR at the Leiden European City of Science is an event that no one interested in FAIR should miss.