Progress toward a comprehensive teaching approach to the FAIR data principles

Abstract

We evaluate recent efforts to further the effective teaching of FAIR data principles by examining existing and developing educational frameworks focused upon FAIR, training initiatives that have informed teaching on FAIR skills' topics, and a number of key sources for discovering FAIR training materials and how much those sources provide descriptive information about the materials. FAIR4S, providing a coherent description of skills and competencies, is analyzed by target audience using the description of actors found in a European Open Science Cloud ecosystem report and by comparison of the coverage and extent of description of educational and training materials available from the list of sources for finding such materials. Our analysis elucidates the importance of linking resources to FAIR-related educational frameworks, providing consistent descriptions of them using a community-based metadata scheme, and developing an instructor community of practice where ideas and methods can be shared on how to teach FAIR data skills.

Keywords: DSML 4: Production: Data science output is validated, understood, and regularly used for multiple domains/platforms.

Figure 1

Description of actors in the EOSC ecosystem and related skills needs Reproduced from Barker et al.