Adding FAIRsharing records to UK resources

[allysonlister]

Added some links to the FAIRsharing records describing many of these resources. Thanks!

[bedroesb]

@allysonlister thanks for adding these links. I just don't know if this is the way to move forward. We in the past did multiple efforts do minimize the use of "brand names" that are not familiar to people outside of ELIXIR, or at least try to explain them (see the recent changes to our more information section). Can we make use of a more descriptive url text? In the tools and resources table we call it "Standards/Databases", but this is not great in this context. Maybe we just call it "DOI" ? Thinking out loud here! We do not have strict rules for our national pages though.

[allysonlister]

FAIRsharing is a project that exists well beyond ELIXIR, and is in fact a subject agnostic resource across the entire RDM community... If you're trying to minimise links I do understand, but FAIRsharing is already linked throughout RDMkit therefore this wouldn't be a big break from how things are done (although I believe there is even more we could do together to help you maintain what links you want to include via FAIRsharing collections, as I've mentioned in the past - happy to talk about that separately if you like).

Robert Andrews mentioned in today's ELIXIR RDM club that people were welcome to suggest updates, so hopefully we can find a way to these updates that will make everyone happy :)

The reason the FAIRsharing records are particularly important is outlined in https://fairsharing.org/educational#policies and also because we provide, via our policy records, structured, human- and machine-readable policy metadata that makes it really easy for people to understand the key FAIR-enabling aspects of policies. Those policy documents are very dense and our policy records really help people understand them. If it would help to make an RDMkit page describing how FAIRsharing policy records can help various stakeholder groups, do let me know.

I'm very happy to discuss the way in which we should show this on this page - are you suggesting with your screenshot that we create a table of those funder policies you're describing, and include FAIRsharing links in that table, rather than using the itemised list? I'm not the owner of the page, so can't really comment on what they would like.

[bedroesb]

Sorry I think I didn't make myself clear enough. I do am fine with adding those FAIRsharing links, but as in my screenshot, we do not always have to use the word "FAIRsharing"in order to link towards it. You don't have to convince me about the usefulness ;) But I just want to minimize the amount of terms people have to know in order to understand the website and why things are there. We also replaced the Bio.tools links with "Tool info" for example. This way the link is still there, but peole do not have to know what bio.tools is, I would like to do the same here for FAIRsharing links.

Concerning the RDM community, I like to think beyond this and to see our audience as researchers and data stewards that are not yet familiar with ELIXIR, which I I think are still the biggest chunk of people out there.

[allysonlister]

Ah ok I get it now... I'm not sure what is best to call it here, "DOI" doesn't work well either, as there could be other things with DOIs... Can we tag Robert Andrews here? I'm not sure what his github username is....

[nsoranzo]

@robertmand

[robertmand]

@bedroesb a job for the editor board I think - to suggest a heading other than DOI.

[smza]

Hi @allysonlister and @robertmand,

We had a discussion about this issue in the editorial board meeting and we concluded that right now we cannot add the FAIRsharing record information to the policies in the current state. Ofcourse we link and integrate with FAIRsharing for the tools in the "tools and resources table" in a dedicated standards column, but policies are not listed in this table. We are still in discussion and will take some time to devise a better way to enlist polices and have FAIRsharing record associated with them. Till then please bear with us!

Thanks, Munazah - on behalf of the editorial team

[allysonlister]

Hi Munazah, and thanks.

I understand if you're still thinking of a better way to do things. What do you mean, by the way, by "in the current state"? Is there some limitation to either RDMkit, the particular page I'm suggesting the edit on, or FAIRsharing that limits the utility of these suggested additions?

Thanks!

[smza]

Hi Allyson,

By "the current state" I mean that if we accept the changes the way you have suggested now, it just adds another link with the same information. So two links will be displayed in one line pointing to identical information, which in my opinion does not add value.

Hope this

[allysonlister]

it just adds another link with the same information. So two links will be displayed in one line pointing to identical information, which in my opinion does not add value.

Apologies for my continued confusion. Are you saying that FAIRsharing provides identical information to the underlying homepages for the resources we describe? If so, then I have to disagree. While we capture metadata largely curated from the resource homepage, its representation and structure provides extra information that cannot be easily retrieved from the source repository, e.g.

• explicitly listed relationships to organisations and other standards/databases/policies which are sometimes present implicitly (or, helpfully, even explicitly) within the resource homepage, but are much more often only present in publications, hidden in documentation, or even only present in the resource homepage of the object on the other side of the graph edge, e.g. a funder policy recommending the use of a database, and infrastructure including the resource in its collection of relevant resources.
• Structured metadata to help assist in the understanding of FAIRness (open/closed access, preservation policies etc) that can be easily found, as such information is usually difficult to retrieve by spending time reading the webpage
• cross references to other resources

The FAIRsharing record is intended to improve the understandability and description of a resource on its own, but also within the broader research graph of resources and organisations. Therefore the reasoning around excluding FAIRsharing links due to "identical information" does not make sense to me.

Thanks!

[smza]

Apologies for my continued confusion. Are you saying that FAIRsharing provides identical information to the underlying homepages for the resources we describe? If so, then I have to disagree. While we capture metadata largely curated from the resource homepage, its representation and structure provides extra information that cannot be easily retrieved from the source repository, e.g.

Hi Allyson,

I do understand the additional information that FAIRSharing provides, what I meant was adding a FAIRsharing doi without providing context will be not be particularly informative. So, we are not denying the value that FAIRsharing adds and the additional information it provides but just arguing that we haven't reached a policy decision on how to represent FAIRsharing records of policy documents to make it more fruitful for our users. Until we reach a decision to find a way to represent FAIRsharing record we would like to hold back adding the FAIRsharing DOI next to the policy documents.

Thanks, Munazah