What are Open and F.A.I.R Data?

Open Data

The inherent value data hold to the research process cannot be overstated, and existing data hold great potential to accelerate scientific discovery through reuse once shared.

The concept of open data — data that are publicly and freely discoverable, accessible, and reusable (opendefinition.org) — has been steadily gaining momentum in the scientific community: “Open data is like a renewable energy source: it can be reused without diminishing its original value, and reuse creates new value.” (Science et al., 2017).

Realizing the value of open data within the scientific research landscape, several stakeholders from funders to publishers, are driving change in the culture of data sharing (Mayernik, 2012, Costas et al., 2013; NSF17-037, 2017; Holdren, 2013). With this shift, many digital data repositories have come online to provide data management services that meet stakeholder needs for data discovery and access.

However, in order for data to be reused efficiently and effectively, they must also be well-managed and stewarded. Here, domain-specific repositories add great value to their community’s research data by bringing subject matter expertise to the curation process (Lenhert, 2015; ICPSR, 2013).

Data Life Cycle

Curating and providing open access to research data is a collaborative process. This process may be thought of as a life cycle with data passing through various phases. Each phase has its own associated actors, roles, and critical activities. Good data management (including data description through metadata and documentation, quality assurance, and backups) and practices are necessary for all phases, from proposal to preservation.

F.A.I.R Principles

The four F.A.I.R. Principles (Wilkinson et al., 2016) are a set of values intended to guide data producers and publishers in establishing good data management and stewardship practices. These principles are at the core mission of BCO-DMO:

Must-reads on the F.A.I.R. principles

Wilkinson et al. (2016) was the start on this topic, while Stall et al. (2018) highlights activities aimed at promoting FAIR principles within the Earth and space science communities.

• Wilkinson, M., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, I. et al. (2016) The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Sci Data 3, 160018. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18

• Stall, S., et al. (2018), Advancing FAIR data in Earth, space, and environmental science, Eos, 99, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018EO109301. Published 5 November 2018.

• Fair principles. GO FAIR. (2022, January 21). https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/. Published on 02 January 2022

BCO-DMO's Data Stewardship

BCO-DMO aligns its data stewardship philosophy with the F.A.I.R. Data Principles (Wilkinson et al., 2016). These principles outline tangible practices data providers can employ to promote easier sharing and ultimate reuse of data by both machines and humans, thereby making them “Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable”. In addition, the project considers the components of the Data Stewardship Maturity Matrix (Peng et al., 2015): preservability, accessibility/usability, data quality transparency/traceability, and data integrity as trustworthy guidelines for assessing BCO-DMO’s data stewardship practices.

An important tenet of the project is its value of people, both the highly trained data managers and the investigators with whom they work closely to ensure that data are complete, quality checked, well-organized and described, and publicly accessible. Staff utilize domain knowledge to: assist investigators with data management plans, assess submitted data for completeness, perform gross quality control and reformatting, display data in the most appropriate manner for each data type, and assemble robust metadata necessary to discover, understand, and reuse the data.