FAIRy stories
Tales from building the
FAIR Research Commons
Carole Goble
The University of Manchester, UK
ELIXIR UK Head of Node
FAIRDOM Coordinator
Software Sustainability Institute UK
carole.goble@manchester.ac.uk
INCF Neuroinformatics 2019, Warsaw, September 1-2, 2019

FAIR Guiding Principles for Scientific Data Management and
Stewardship, Scientific Data 3, 160018 (2016)
doi:10.1038/sdata.2016.18

A Digital Object Research Commons
organising DOs for a field and across fields.
A “shared space” where investigators can store, share, access, connect
and interact with digital objects generated from research, and use
them. Not a Database or Data warehouse.
repositories
zoo
registries
zoo
https://medium.com/@rgrossman1/a-proposed-end-to-end-principle-for-data-commons-5872f2fa8a47 [Bob Grossman, 2018]

A Digital Object Research Commons
organising DOs for a field and across fields.
A “shared space” where investigators can store, share, access, connect
and interact with digital objects generated from research, and do
more data-intensive research. Not a Database or Data warehouse.
Ecosystem of pooled
community resources
Federation with many entry
points
Collectively created, owned or
shared by community
Mixed degrees of control

[Ian Fore, 2019]
We are all trying to build
A FAIR Research Commons

We are all trying to build
A FAIR Research Commons

We are all trying to build
A FAIR Research Commons

An “ad hoc” commons “in the Wild”
Using FAIR as a general principle
Fragmented
ecosystem of pooled
community resources
Distributed
federation with many
entry points and
many providers
Each has its APIs,
Web interfaces, Data
Submission,Tool
deployment
23 countries
15 communities
Including health
Held together with standards, metadata
mark-up, common identifiers, registries,
workflows, shared vision, hard work, love
and hope.
National
datasets
Community,
Public datasets
http://elixir-europe.org

Uber FAIR Life Science Commons
Federation over an ecosystem of different fields
Ecosystem of
FAIR innovative
tools
Publish
FAIR life
science data
A zoo of Catalogues of
tools, data, workflows,
computing resources …

Our first FAIRy tale:
Finding* stuff in a pre-existing ecosystem
EOSC Dataset Minimum Information
https://eosc-edmi.github.io/
Minimum information
metadata guideline to find and
access datasets reusing existing
data models and interfaces.
Conventions for using
schema.org
Find, Access and Index
Google Dataset Search
Small, Lightweight, Viral
A little bit of Semantics everywhere
*and a bit of provenance, licencing

Our first FAIRy tale:
Finding* stuff in a pre-existing ecosystem
Structured data descriptors in web
pages
Low barrier universal mark-up
Harvesting, indexing, search
Exchange & register without API
Automated curation
A little bit of Semantics everywhere
*and a bit of provenance, licencing

Our first FAIRy tale:
Finding* stuff in a pre-existing ecosystem
A little bit of Semantics everywhere
The Goldilocks Principle

Scale out mark-up for a federation
Dataset
Properties
91 -> 5 + 8

Data Exchange: Without an API
MarRef → BioSamples
https://github.com/EBIBioSamples/bioschemas_marref_demo/blob/master/Summary.md
Bioschemas markup added
to MarRef pages
Markup crawled using BuzzBang
Data included as a BioSample Curation

A happy ending approaches
Endorsed by ELIXIR
First types -> Schema.org
Goldilocks
• Esp. good for small data providers
• Types & Profiles debates/explosion
• Domain ontology reuse challenges
• Elegance vs best for tools
• Trolls
Community based demonstration (Toxicology, Rare Disease)
Validation, mark-up & harvesting tools
A subset
of the
FAIR
Principles

Is your resource FAIR?
Is your data/workflow/model FAIR from first to last?
The FAIR Data Principles
vs
FAIR the Nice Intention

2014 - Lorentz workshop
2015 - BioHackathon
2016 - Published
Grassroots activity that has
become a top down one.
Many efforts before….
Scientific Data 3, 160018
(2016)
doi:10.1038/sdata.2016.18
2nd Story: FAIR.
Once Upon A Time…

https://www.incf.org/activities/standards-and-best-practices/what-is-fair
The FAIR
principles in
the paper…
actually only in a
break out box

https://www.incf.org/activities/standards-and-best-practices/what-is-fair
Machine and human readable
data formats and metadata
that is compliant to many
community standards, that
persists, and tells you the
provenance of the data and
how its cross-linked
Data and metadata are
locatable and accessible by
GUIDs, standard access
protocols and have the least
restrictive licenses

Access
Reproducibility
Automation
Policy
Practice
Proclamation
“enhancing the ability
of machines to
automatically find and
use data or any digital
object, and support its
reuse by individuals”
FAIR Principles
more than a fuzzy feeling

The message spread
across the lands….

The message spread
across the lands….

Simple words are powerful
things that can be mangled.
Simple concepts are not so
simple to implement.
Once size does not fit all.
Beware FAIR zealots and
vested interests.

We { are | will be | always have been } FAIR
Use our platform /technology to be FAIR.
Even if its not what FAIR meant
Only we control FAIR.
Our way is the right way.
We don’t know what it means to implement
FAIR but we want to measure and certify it.

“FAIR principles: interpretations and implementation considerations” J Data
Intelligence, coming soon in 2019…. which was still contentious

FAIRy tale -> Reality!
• An aspiration, a journey.
• A call for machine actionability. of
data and metadata.
• Ambiguous.
• A spectrum.
• Domain respectful.
• Implementable with todays
protocols and standards.
• A subset of indicators:
– ROI cost/benefit, impact, community
need, sustainability of repository,
quality of content/service….
• Work in progress.
Principles are… Principles are not…
• A standard.
• Just about humans.
• Strict.
• Technology specific.
• Only for one domain.
• About inventing new
protocols.
• One size fits all.
• Anything to do with quality.
• Synonymous with open.
• Tablets of stone.
• Mons et al Cloudy, increasingly FAIR; Revisiting the FAIR Data guiding principles for the European Open Science Cloud. Information Services &
Use. 37. 1-8. 10.3233/ISU-170824.
• Dunning et al Are the FAIR Data Principles fair? IDCC17

FAIRy Stories about FAIR
• Its not about Open
• Its not about a resource’s
Quality or Impact
• Its not actually about
Harmonising all metadata to
one schema.

The FAIR Hype
Clarity
Infrastructure
Methodologies
Incentives
Cost/benefit analysis

FAIR is a Journey….
Concepts
for FAIR
Impleme
ntation
FAIR
Culture
FAIR
Ecosystem
Skills
for
FAIR
Incentives
and
Metrics
Invest
ment
in FAIR
Turning FAIR into Reality, EC Report, 2018

Review Criteria for Endorsement of Standards and
Best Practices, 2018 DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.2535741
Subset of principles
applied to standards
and best practices
The INCF Commons
and its Resources
themselves?
“INCF supports the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable,
Reusable) principles, and adherence to them is a requirement for
an INCF-endorsed standard or best practice.”
https://www.incf.org/activities/standards-and-best-practices

Defining and Implementing FAIR
Clarity
Metrics / Indicators
Maturity Models
Manual / Automated Assessment
FAIRification Methodologies
• At the first mile
• At the last mile
• For the legacy
Toolkits,Tools and Services

Compliance
Awareness
Expectation
setting
Self-evaluation
Reporting
Certification
Endorsement
Judgement
Regulation
Comparison
Monitoring
Review
Quality
Contract
By Providers,
Users &
Community
By Community By ???

https://fairshake.cloud/
http://blog.ukdataservice.ac.uk/fair-data-assessment-tool/
https://www.howfairismydata.com/
Unhappy ending
• Subjective
• Hard to interpret and compare
• Weak transparency
• Judgemental
• Drift to Quality review
• Independent of the community
• Occasionally barking mad
Community pushback

https://fairshake.cloud/
http://blog.ukdataservice.ac.uk/fair-data-assessment-tool/
https://www.howfairismydata.com/
Dunkelziffer
“Not everything that can be
counted counts.
Not everything that counts can
be counted”
[William Bruce Cameron]
“FAIR is non-trivial, and
domain specific at anything
other than the most superficial
level” Wilkinson

Matrix of indicators
Maturity levels for
each
+
*The MetricTide, https://responsiblemetrics.org/the-metric-tide/
A FAIR Assessment
Transparent
evaluation
What, Who, How
Objective evaluations
Narrative feedback on fails
Indicators
Robustness,
Humility,
Transparency,
Diversity,
Reflexivity*
Context
Community standards
Incremental
Cost/benefit
Not just a score
Non judgmental
Scope for novelty
Transparent evaluation Eat the Dog Food
Design-Build-Test-Learn
indicators and evaluation

Maturity Model
Value Based Assessment
Selection
Goal Setting
Process planning
Modelling
Transformation
Publishing
[Susheel Varma]
A FAIR Assessment

Capability Maturity Model
of entities & their capabilities
Indicators and metrics
measuring levels
Foundational
Components
FAIRification
Process
Awareness and Policy
Standards and Guidelines
People
Infrastructure
Value Based
Assessment
Selection
Goal Setting
Process planning
Modelling
Transformation
Publishing
Impl.Outcome:
Dataset
Persistent Identification
Data Set Discovery
Machine Readability
DataAccess and Usage
Preservation and Sustainability
FAIR Data Maturity ModelWG
A FAIR Assessment
[Oya Deniz Beyan, 2019]

Next meeting 12th September 2019
Sessions at Helsinki RDA Plenary October 2019

Licence
Metadata includes information about the licence under which the data can be reusedMandatory
Metadata includes licence information in the appropriate element of the metadata
standard used
Metadata refers to a standard reuse licenceRecommended
Metadata includes information about consent for reuse (e.g. personal data)
Metadata refers to a machine-understandable reuse licenceOptional
FAIR Data Maturity ModelWG
An “easy” indicator….
“R1.1. (meta)data are released with a clear and
accessible data usage license”
Format Allows
-- -- --
non-standard human readable access
standard
open standard reuse
& machine readable
clear reuse criteria
“
“
“
“
“ “
“

A trickier indicator…
“R1.3. (meta)data meet domain-relevant
community standards”FAIR Data Maturity ModelWG
Mandatory
Recommended
Metadata complies with a community standard
Data complies with a community standard
Metadata is expressed in compliance with a machine-understandable community standard
Data is expressed in compliance with a machine-understandable community standard
Neuroshapes
Metadata
Portal
Reviewers
Suppose there isn’t a standard or its not up to it?
Indicators have to be community specific
Librarian’s view point vs Genomics view point?
How is it validated? JSON and SHACL validators.
How is it captured? Spreadsheets.
Interoperability is nearly always purpose specific

• Community governed “indicators” not metrics
• Automated objective scale up & out
• Sanity check put into practice
https://fairsharing.github.io/FAIR-Evaluator-FrontEnd/#!/
Community
creates
Maturity
Indicators
Registered,
Collections
Compliance
tests written,
registered
Resource
tested
from a
starting
identifier
Report,
(Registered)
Wilkinson et al “Evaluating FAIR Maturity Through a Scalable, Automated, Community-
Governed Framework” bioRxiv, https://doi.org/10.1101/649202 , 2019

“FAIRification” (of legacy datasets)
the new magic wand word
• Need to do at the same
time as define indicators
• Needs experts
• BYODs
• ROI cost/benefit step
• Muddle with
harmonisation pipelines
(compliance to I and R)
• Non-trivial
• Upstream
• Turning into a business
https://fairplus-project.eu/
https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/fairification-process/

FAIR needs
to be at the
“first mile”,
embedded into
investigator
practice.
Mark Wilkinson
Just saying you are
FAIR doesn’t make
it true. Its uneven
and multi-facetted.
Identifier use is
chaotic.
Separating
metadata and data
is problematic.
FAIRification is
non-trivial.
FAIR is a set of
behaviours
not a specific
technology

Commons for autonomous,
self-managing Sys Bio projects
Hubs for Projects,
People, Data, Models, SOPs,
Workflows, Samples
First Mile /
Last Mile
From the
infrastructure /
standard /
commons /
database / tool / *
To the actual
investigator
fair-dom.org, fairdomhub.org

I3: references between
(meta)data
Models + Data + Methods
Respect and bridge the ecosystem
federated catalogue, integrated context

Respect and bridge the ecosystem
federated catalogue, integrated context
Public database
Local store
National infrastructure
Secure store
Public model
repository
Github
Shared SOPs

Neylon, Knowledge Exchange Report: http://www.knowledge-exchange.info/event/ke-approach-open-scholarship
Respect and bridge the ecosystem
going the first mile, and the last mile*
A miracle of sweat
and tears here
different scales, different agendas, different incentives
Koureas, The ‘last mile’ challenge for European research e-infrastructures https://riojournal.com/article/9933/
New ELIXIR
Converge
project

[Maryann Martone]

TheTragedy of the FAIR Commons*
• A Commons is only a
FAIR as its tenants
• Project sovereignty
• Public good vs personal
burden
• Professional
Stewardship for Projects
• Community socialisation
and values
Nudging
*Mark Musen , https://ncip.nci.nih.gov/blog/face-new-tragedy-commons-remedy-better-metadata/
Based on Matt Spritzer / Brian Nosek figure, COS

More than just data
Software, models, workflows, SOPs, Lab Protocols….
4th (and Last story): FAIR Digital Objects

FAIR Workflows Commons
Workflow management
system (and registry) zoo*
*https://s.apache.org/existing-workflow-systems

FAIR Computational Workflows
The point of FAIR (meta)data was
to be machine actionable….. and
even better if machine generated.
• Operate in FAIR not proprietary
formats
• Support propagation of identifiers,
licenses, and AAI
• Mint FAIR identifiers, track data
provenance, license end products
Goble et al 2019 FAIR ComputationalWorkflows https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3268653

FAIR workflows in their own right.
Like Software:
Principles stretched
Versioning
Software maturity, quality, maintainability,
documentation practices
Goble et al 2019 FAIR ComputationalWorkflows https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3268653

FAIR workflows in their own right.
Like Data:
We can give them machine
actionable metadata.
Goble et al 2019 FAIR ComputationalWorkflows https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3268653
Describes workflows to be
portable, scalable & interoperable
with different workflow systems and containerised tools
Bundles descriptions, references, files
Adds context, provenance, examples, data …
Relates to data collections, SOPs, lab protocols…
Links CWL descriptions with native workflows

Regulatory Practice
robust, safe exchange and reuse of HTS
computational analytical workflows
http://biocomputeobject.org
IEEE P2791
BioComputeWorking Group
[Vahan Simonyan]
Alterovitz, Dean II,Goble,Crusoe, Soiland-Reyes et al “Enabling Precision Medicine via standard communication of NGS provenance, analysis,
and results” PLOS Biology 2018, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000099

A happy ending?
• FAIR is work in progress!
• Keep grounded,
developer friendly and
community supported
• No-one reads specs.
Everyone copies
examples.
• Nipype CWL is coming!
MG-RAST/EBI MGnify
Design by workflow blocks
Pipeline versions comparison
Pipeline exchange
Recycling tool descriptions and
sub-workflows

What is FAIR, what should be FAIR and how to
implement it is not simple.
Its not just Good Intentions
A social story, not a technical one.
Without incentives, cultural normalisation and long
term investment it will be a just a story.
INCF’s FAIR Journey….

Acknowledgements
Ian Fore
Mark Wilkinson
Susanna Sansone
Stian Soiland-Reyes
Rob Grossman
Barend Mons
Nick Juty
Alasdair Gray
Rafael Jimenez
Michel Dumontier
Michael Crusoe
Ian Cottam
And all the projects and many more