Exploring the FAIR requirements for federated infrastructures in the life sciences and beyond

13 FEB 2024

Collaborative session notes https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_bTRIoAbxr0XDXC8STEw2Y3m-qhfXYMiDpsvY4Z6KWg/edit?usp=drive_link

Group(s) submitting the application: 

Life Science Data Infrastructures IG

Meeting objectives: 

This meeting will showcase examples of successful and promising approaches for federating infrastructures in the biomolecular life sciences to enable seamless discovery and insight generated from analyses distributed over regionally dispersed and heterogeneous resources.

The examples will inform a discussion with the wider RDA community to identify opportunities for future work and collaborations with an emphasis on how to leverage the FAIR principles to identify requirements on the contracts that define the federation and the common interfaces across its members.

The outcome of the meeting will be a short report that briefly covers each of the approaches presented and opportunities for future collaborations, all participants will be invited to contribute.

Meeting agenda: 

Leading up to the session, the organisers will reach out to RDA groups and call for participants to contribute flash talks on their approaches to support an inclusive discussion with wide representation across regions and disciplines. The agenda for this session is as follows:

2. Short presentation 2 (20mins): FAIR data analysis for the life science and beyond using the Galaxy platform

3. Connecting FAIR data resources and services – What are promising approaches? (20 minutes)

Target Audience: 

The primary audience is new and experienced RDA members who are interested in the social and technical aspects of enabling federated data infrastructures in the biomolecular life sciences. But the meeting is open to anyone who would like to get an overview of the topic and applications of the FAIR principles.

Group chair serving as contact person: 

Jeff Christiansen

Brief introduction describing the activities and scope of the group: 

The Life Science Data Infrastructures Interest Group was formed to serve as a bridge between life science data infrastructures in different regions of the world and relevant RDA Interest and Working Groups, including both specific subtopics of the life sciences, as well as generic topics that can/should be applied in the life sciences such as big data analysis, federated identity management, and data publishing.

The IG aspires to have meaningful representation from diverse geographical regions including North and South America, Europe; Africa, Asia and Oceania; and will actively seek participation from under-represented groups and the global South. The IG also aims for fair gender representation and inclusivity in all its activities.

We have worked with the FAIRsharing Registry: Connecting data policies, standards and databases RDA WG to co-orgainse the Infrastructure supporting the FAIR data principles in life science research practice session at the 20th Plenary (Gothenburg), and sought advice from the Chairs of the Global Open Research Commons (GORC) IG to inform our work. All the chairs of the IG are actively involved on a day to day basis to influence or deploy best practice national scale data infrastructure to support life science research in our respective countries.

Short Group Status: 

The Charter for this group was approved by the TAB in May 2022. The group met for the first time at the 19th RDA Plenary in June 2022 to introduce the aims of the group, and at the following plenaries in 2023 (20th and 21st) were focused towards exploring the implementation and interpretation of the FAIR principles in digital asset management challenges that life science data infrastructures are working to solve on behalf of their user communities.

At this plenary, the group is aiming to contextualise its learnings using examples from federated infrastructures and to identify opportunities for new collaborations on this topic within and beyond the life science data infrastructures community.

Type of Meeting: 

Working meeting

Additional links to informative material: 

Previous sessions:

Avoid conflict with the following group (1): 

RDA-OfR Creating a Multi-omics Metadata Schema Standard Reporting Matrix WG

Avoid conflict with the following group (2): 

Sensitive Data Interest Group

Meeting presenters: 

Wolmar Nyberg Åkerström (ELIXIR), Jeff Christiansen (Australian BioCommons) and others (TBC)

Contact for group (email): 

jeff@biocommons.org.au

Please indicate at least (3) three breakout slots that would suit your meeting.: 

Are you willing to host a second, repeat, session at a different time zone?: 

Yes

Please indicate a minimum of (3) three breakout slot (s) that would suit your repeat session in a different time zone: