FAIRification Efforts of Clinical Researchers: The Current State of Affairs

Abstract

The FAIR Principles are supported by various initiatives in the biomedical community. However, little is known about the knowledge and efforts of individual clinical researchers regarding data FAIRification. We distributed an online questionnaire to researchers from six Dutch University Medical Centers, as well as researchers using an Electronic Data Capture platform, to gain insight into their understanding of and experience with data FAIRification. 164 researchers completed the questionnaire. 64.0% of them had heard of the FAIR Principles. 62.8% of the researchers spent some or a lot of effort to achieve any aspect of FAIR and 11.0% addressed all aspects. Most researchers were unaware of the Principles' emphasis on both human- and machine-readability, as their FAIRification efforts were primarily focused on achieving human-readability (93.9%), rather than machine-readability (31.2%). In order to make machine-readable, FAIR data a reality, researchers require proper training, support, and tools to help them understand the importance of data FAIRification and guide them through the FAIRification process.

Keywords: FAIR data; Research Data Management; medical research.