The FAIR for Research Software (FAIR4RS) Working Group presented the structure of the first draft of the FAIR4RS principles at the Research Data Alliance (RDA) Plenary 17 on 21 April 2021:
The Working Group initiated community consultation with the ~ 70 attendees focusing on key questions that arose during the writing sprints to create the first draft of the FAIR4RS principles. The intent of the FAIR principles for research software is to “ensure transparency, reproducibility, and reusability”, while acknowledging that foundational principles of Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable may need to be reinterpreted to ensure that they are applicable to software. Drafting of the FAIR principles for research software includes consideration of two key challenges: 1) Finding the balance between general, more abstract, principles that capture the ethos of FAIR vs specific principles that point to the means of implementation. 2) Sticking closely to the FAIR data principles or reinterpreting the FAIR ethos for software.
The slides and collaborative notes are available for review and the recording will be publicly available at the end of May via the RDA YouTube channel.
Next steps
The FAIR4RS will launch the second consultation process on Monday 17 May for two weeks. All working group members are invited to provide comments between (17-30 May) before sending it to the broader Community for final Review. After that the paper will be shared publicly for four weeks for review via the RDA website, FORCE11 and ReSA websites. Instructions of how to engage in the next iteration of the draft principles will be sent via the FAIR4RS mailing list (RDA FAIR4RS WG posts). Join the group to receive the notification. For more information about activities of the WG see Minutes.
kind regards,
FAIR4RS WG Steering Committee