Be FAIR to your data

Abstract

Wouldn't it be great, if experimental data were findable wherever they were? If experimental data were accessible' regardless of the storage place and format? If experimental data were interoperable independent of the author or its origin? If experimental data were reusable for further analysis without experimental repetition? The current state of the art of data acquisition in the laboratory is very diverse. A lot of different devices are used, analogue as well as digital ones. Usually all experimental setups and observations are summarized in a handwritten lab notebook, independently from digital or analogue sources. To change the actual and common way of laboratory data acquisition into a digital and modern one, electronic lab notebooks can be used. A challenge of science is to facilitate knowledge discovery by assisting humans and machines in their discovery of scientific data and their associated algorithms and workflows. FAIR describes a set of guiding principles to make data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.

Keywords: FAIR principles; Lab notebooks; Open access; Scientific data management.

Fig. 1

State of the art of data acquisition. The settings and observations from any devices are summarized manually in lab notebooks and transformed into individual results (pictures by Eberhard Franke and Dörte Solle)

Fig. 2

Data acquisition in the future. The settings and observation from digital devices are summarized, structured and commented in electronic lab notebook for upload to repositories (pictures by Eberhard Franke and Dörte Solle)