Trust and Accountability: experiences from the FAIRDOM Commons Initiative.

Presented at Digital Life 2018, Bergen, March 2018. In the Trust and Accountability session. In recent years we have seen a change in expectations for the management and availability of all the outcomes of research (models, data, SOPs, software etc) and for greater transparency and reproduciblity in the method of research. The “FAIR” (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) Guiding Principles for stewardship [1] have proved to be an effective rallying-cry for community groups and for policy makers. The FAIRDOM Initiative (FAIR Data Models Operations, http://www.fair-dom.org) supports Systems Biology research projects with their research data, methods and model management, with an emphasis on standards and sensitivity to asset sharing and credit anxiety. Our aim is a FAIR Research Commons that blends together the doing of research with the communication of research. The Platform has been installed by over 30 labs/projects and our public, centrally hosted FAIRDOMHub [2] supports the outcomes of 90+ projects. We are proud to support projects in Norway’s Digital Life programme. 2018 is our 10th anniversary. Over the past decade we learned a lot about trust between researchers, between researchers and platform developers and curators and between both these groups and funders. We have experienced the Tragedy of the Commons but also seen shifts in attitudes. In this talk we will use our experiences in FAIRDOM to explore the political, economic, social and technical, social practicalities of Trust. [1] Wilkinson et al (2016) The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship Scientific Data 3, doi:10.1038/sdata.2016.18 [2] Wolstencroft, et al (2016) FAIRDOMHub: a repository and collaboration environment for sharing systems biology research Nucleic Acids Research, 45(D1): D404-D407. DOI: 10.1093/nar/gkw1032