Progress on FAIR 4 Research Software WG

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04 Aug 2020
Group(s) submitting the application: 
Meeting objectives: 

At the beginning of July 2020, the FAIR for research software (FAIR4RS) WG started coordinating efforts to leverage community-led discussions on how to define and effectively apply FAIR principles to research software. This initiative has been divided in four subgroups with specific deliverables. We had about 50 participants who expressed interest in contributing to one or more of these subgroups. During the Virtual Plenary 16, the steering committee and the collaborators would like to inform the broader community about the work done in the last semester. After the progress updates we invite people to discuss and provide feedback to the recent activities. 

Meeting agenda: 

 

Collaborative Notes Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ycupvMsGfCLifAYa56l0AZwbz7B0f6_-klE4...

 

This meeting will provide an update on work towards the first milestone in the FAIR4RS WG case statement. M1: “identifying challenges in defining FAIR for research software”.This will lay the groundwork for the second milestone. M2: a “Document developed with community support defining FAIR principles for research software”.

  1. Introduction and WG proposal (5 minutes)

  2. WG Progress updates, subgroup leads (20 minutes)

  3. Break-out groups to discuss activities (45 Minutes)

  4. Report back and recommendations (20 Minutes)

The Group meeting is informative and will encourage community feedback. This session will include progress updates on each of the deliverables of the four FAIR4RS subgroups.

Target Audience: 

Anyone interested in the progress of this group might attend. This work will be of value to software project owners, researchers, users of research data and software, the scientific community, research software engineers, software developers who publish their software, software catalogue maintainers, repository managers, software preservation and archival experts, policymakers who are responsible for defining digital policies, and organisations that create, modify, manage, share, protect, and preserve research software and funders of research.

We would also like to invite members of RDA groups whose interests overlap with this group: CURE FAIR WG, SSC IG, FAIR Data Maturity Model, Research Metadata Schemas WG, FAIR data maturity model, Go FAIR IG, Exposing Data Management Plans WG, Active Data Management Plans IG, Research Funders and Stakeholders on Open Research Data Management Policies and Practices IG, and Global Open Research Commons IG .

Group chair serving as contact person: 
Brief introduction describing the activities and scope of the group: 

Software has become essential for research. To improve the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reuse of research software, it is desirable to develop and apply a set of FAIR Guiding Principles for Software. Many of the high-level FAIR data principles can be directly applied to research software by treating software and data as similar digital research objects. However, specific characteristics of software — such as its executability, composite nature, and continuous evolution and versioning — make it necessary to revise and extend the original data principles.

Application of the FAIR principles to software will continue to advance the aims of the open science movement. The FAIR For Research Software Working Group (FAIR4RS WG) is jointly convened as an RDA Working Group, FORCE11 Working Group, and Research Software Alliance (ReSA) Taskforce in recognition of the importance of this work for the advancement of the research sector. FAIR4RS WG is a coordination group to leverage existing community-led discussions on how to define and effectively apply FAIR principles to research software, to achieve adoption of these principles.

Our first milestone is targeted to work on identifying issues in the definition of FAIR for research software based on analysis of existing definitions and frameworks. Including a definition of research software to delineate the scope that FAIR will be applied to.

Short Group Status: 

The status of the FAIR4RS WG is in revision (August 2020). Our case statement has been resubmitted based on Community and TAB feedback. Despite the fact that the group is pending official approval, the community, led by the steering committee, has commenced work in July 2020 and expects to present the updates during the VP16.

Type of Meeting: 
Informative meeting
Avoid conflict with the following group (1): 
Avoid conflict with the following group (2): 
Meeting presenters: 
Paula Andrea Martinez, Michelle Barker, Daniel S. Katz, Leyla Garcia, Neil Chue Hong, Morane Gruenpeter, Fotis Psomopoulos, Jennifer Harrow, Mateusz Kuzak. (Depending on session times)