Making FAIR Data a Reality… and the Challenges of Interoperability and Reusability

Building on previous summaries of the attributes that make research data most usable by other scientists (for replication, reanalysis and reuse), the framework provided by the FAIR data principles has gained support from policy makers, funders and researchers and has helped progress towards the vision of Open Science. Combined with the principle that research data should be ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’, FAIR data has allowed important principles to be communicated in a more accessible and persuasive way. This talk will first explore how to implement the FAIR data principles and related and enabling practices, with reference to the work of the European Commission’s Expert Group on FAIR data which is developing a report and Action Plan on how to make FAIR data a reality. Second, the talk will consider the challenges of interoperability and reusability in relation to the aspirations of those interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research areas that seek to address the most important global, environmental and societal challenges. Encouraging the development and growing maturity of vocabularies and standards required for interoperability and the integration of data from diverse disciplines will be a major challenge for 21st century research. An initiative of CODATA and the new International Science Council seeks to shed light on ongoing challenges of data availability and integration, taking research into infectious diseases, disaster risk and resilient cities as test cases.