Pillar 5: *Delivering FAIR digital assets*
The FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) for research data management illustrate best practice for sharing open data. They describe how research outputs should be managed so they can be more easily discovered, accessed, understood, exchanged and reused.
We are embracing commons-based approaches and provide an asset commons for all our core digital assets including data, methods, models, workflows, and notebooks. This is enabling us to offer a single window onto all our assets and to bring together currently disparate data services. Asset catalogues and semantic web concepts play a part in the delivery of FAIR principles, and we are also emphasising the vital role of stewardship in the governance of commons technology.
While commons technology offers the ability to reuse our assets, we also recognise that it is important to build a culture of reuse across the organisation and the community. We will therefore seek to develop an overarching software architecture for UKCEH offering a range of maintained software elements for different functions including data storage, analyses, visualisation, and the development of portals. Reuse can also act as a trigger for rapid innovation by building on previously developed building blocks.
The Environmental Information Data Centre (EIDC), hosted by UKCEH since 2000, provides an invaluable resource for researchers across the world. The Centre looks after data derived from more than 75 years of terrestrial and freshwater research programmes carried out in the UK and abroad by scientists from across the world.
EIDC has been awarded the globally recognised CoreTrustSeal accreditation by the World Data Systems (WDS) and Data Seal of Approval (DSA) repository certification bodies. This validates the centre’s functions, procedures and processes, confirming the information curated is managed and archived in a way that preserves its long-term access and use.
