Dutch Techcentre for Life Sciences

The “ELIXIR Training Platform” is partnering with The Carpentries (Software and Data Carpentry) to train life science researchers in computing and data management skills. The “ELIXIR Software development best practices” group, which is part of the ELIXIR Tools Platform, has proposed “Four simple recommendations to encourage best practices in research software” aiming to help researchers and developers to adopt Open Source Software (OSS) practices and thus improve the quality and sustainability of research software. In order to encourage researchers and developers to adopt the four recommendations (4OSS) and build FAIR software, we are developing specific and practical training materials, taking advantage of the Carpentries approach and experience in training material development and maintenance.

The FAIR Data Principles propose that all scholarly output should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. As a set of guiding principles, expressing only the kinds of behaviours that researchers should expect from contemporary data resources, how the FAIR principles should manifest in reality was largely open to interpretation. As support for the Principles has spread, so has the breadth of these interpretations. In observing this creeping spread of interpretation, several of the original authors felt it was now appropriate to revisit the Principles, to clarify both what FAIRness is, and is not.