[OSGeo-Discuss] Opportunity: Enabling FAIR Data project commitment statement

["Peter Löwe"]

Dear all,
This is a reach out to all OSGeo projects and especially their respective project steering committees.
I would like to draw your attention to the Enabling FAIR Data project (http://www.copdess.org/enabling-fair-data-project/) and the opportunity to become signatories of their online commitment statement (more on this below).

The gvSig project already became a signatory. Independently, a proposal was made to the OSGeo board to consider becoming a signatory, too.

Background:
The Enabling FAIR project is funded by the Arnold Foundation (comparable to the Gates Foundation. Details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_and_John_Arnold_Foundation) and managed by AGU, the American Geophysical Union (OSGeo has a MOU with AGU. Details: https://www.osgeo.org/foundation-news/osgeo-and-agu-sign-a-memorandum-of-understanding/).  The project goal is to create an initial critical mass of researchers, research institutes and organisations, publishers, data repositories und funding agencies to establish the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) as best practices in the (Geo-)Sciences. The FAIR principles are compatible with the paradigm of Open Science (including Open Source, Open Data and Open Access). FAIR can be applied to provide transparency especially for cases where access to data is limited to small communities (instead of open data / open access) for reasons like confidentially or protection of personality rights.

The full text (& online signing opportunity) of the commitment statement is available here: http://www.copdess.org/enabling-fair-data-project/commitment-to-enabling-fair-data-in-the-earth-space-and-environmental-sciences/

The core statement is:

--snip--
we commit to these goals:
Ensuring that Earth, space, and environmental science research outputs, including data, software, and samples or standard information about them, are open, FAIR, and curated in trusted domain repositories whenever possible and that other links and information related to scholarly publications follow leading practices for transparency and information.

This means that:
Publication of scholarly articles in the Earth, space, and environmental science community is conditional upon the concurrent availability of the data underpinning the research finding, with only a few, standard, widely adopted exceptions, such as around privacy for human subjects or to protect heritage field samples.

These data should, to the greatest extent possible, be shared, open, and stored in community-approved FAIR-aligned repositories. Leading repositories provide additional quality checks around domain data and data services and facilitate discovery and reuse of data and other research outputs.
--snap--

To my understanding, the goals of the project and OSGeo are highly compatible and the growing number  of projects is well on track to establish an open source infrastructure that meets the FAIR requirements. Because of this I would like to encourage the OSGeo projects to sign the commitment statement.

As said above, the goal of Enabling FAIR Data is to demonstrate that a critical mass of stakeholders pushing for FAIR (and Open Science) exists and can be extended. This is an opportunity for the OSGeo projects to support the shift of the best-practices in science towards openness and (long over-)due credit for geospatial open source software.    

Overview over all signatories so far: http://www.copdess.org/enabling-fair-data-project/commitment-to-enabling-fair-data-in-the-earth-space-and-environmental-sciences/signatories/

BTW: The commitment statement can be signed individuals, too. 

best,
peter




<peter.loewe at gmx.de>