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FAIR SSH Working Group: collaborations and prospects

Since their first appearance in the international research environment in 2016, FAIR principles have become a major and fully recognized component of open science. Even more so, they have so much expanded their fields of application that there is almost no research grant, especially in the case of European-funded projects, that does not mention the principles, albeit often in the requirements coupled to the data management plans. While the FAIR principles have become a high-level landmark for Open Science execution, their implementation in research and data practices is still at its beginning. Even now, in 2023, one could say that the existence of ongoing projects focused on further formalizing and implementing FAIR principles demonstrates that a fully FAIRified research environment still needs to be improved. There is an ongoing  discourse on and  beyond the implementation of FAIR principles in each and every service used in research, the same observation could be made about open science and research data management skills: projects devoted to data and digital literacy demonstrate that FAIR principles’ knowledge and mastering could still be improved. This might be especially true if, beyond the generality of FAIR principles potential application to research, we turn down the look towards specific scientific areas or disciplines, where for tradition, priority, or just available funding, FAIR principles knowledge often may not have overcome the level of the simple awareness. 

With all these aspects in mind, ESFRIs in the Social Sciences and Humanities decided to meet regularly in order to coordinate their activities regarding FAIR principles training, implementation, and adaptation to their specific community’s needs. The Working Group brings SSH perspective to FAIR principles implementation and complements other Working groups in RDA or in EOSC as examples. After a first meeting at the end of the year 2022, CESSDA, CLARIN, DARIAH and OPERAS met again during Spring 2023 with two main objectives: updating each other about the FAIR-related projects in which they are involved and exploring the ways of possible and efficient collaboration. While the SSH fields are globally aware of the FAIR principles, the variety of its scientific disciplines and data types, its specific challenges in terms of records’ preservation, storage, description, sharing and licensing, the atomization and limited funding of its supporting services imply the need for a dedicated and coordinated action to spread a full implementation and mastering of the FAIR principles in its perimeter. What is also needed, and maybe SSH is in a pole position to contribute to this, is to raise awareness of the complexity of FAIRification, in other words, to add a reflexive component. Different research communities and their corresponding research infrastructures will need to focus on different aspects of FAIR principles and requirements. 

The meeting’s participants shared the main updates related to the projects having a strong focus on FAIR where they are involved: FAIRCore4EOSC, UPSKILLS project, FAIR Impact, and Skills4EOSC. This quick review allowed us to describe the activities and outputs related to FAIR trainings, either through inclusion into university’s curricula, or through the ongoing  set up of competence centers in open science and research data management. In particular, the challenges and prospects of FAIR trainings dedicated to SSH actors and data types were presented. The contribution of the ESFRIs both in the FAIRImpact project and the EOSC task force on FAIR metrics gave the opportunity to tackle the need for adapting the FAIR metrics automated processes to the SSH specific data types and management processes. The overview of the FAIR dimension in the various projects also allowed the participants to outline how FAIR principles should be connected with long term data management, and more specifically to connect FAIR implementation, at a broader level, with the CoreTrustSeal (CTS) certification for repositories.

The first outcome of this meeting was the decision to continue having such meetings, given the benefits that they could bring to the SSH community and the infrastructures serving it, but including in the future more members of the newly established SSH Open Cluster. A more targeted action should be, through the contribution both to the FAIRImpact and Skills4EOSC projects, the collaboration in the building of Competence Centers for open science and research data management dedicated to the SSH. Lastly, the participants agreed to test existing FAIR metrics tools within their own infrastructures and report back to the group during the next meeting1.

  1. This post has been co-authored by: Arnaud Gingold (OPERAS), Mari Kleemola (CESSDA), Iulianna van der Lek (CLARIN), Andrea Scharnhorst (DARIAH). []

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Arnaud Gingold (September 6, 2023). FAIR SSH Working Group: collaborations and prospects. The road to FAIR. Retrieved March 8, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/trrz


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