FAIRsharing.org is a curated, searchable registry of metadata standards; databases and repositories; and funder and journal policies that are relevant to specific domains or types of data.

Figure 1. FAIRsharing.org home page. Accessed 28 November 2022 at https://fairsharing.org/

Background: The benefits of data sharing have been powerfully demonstrated during the COVID-19 pandemic: shared data made possible the rapid development of public health policies, treatment guidelines, therapies, and vaccines. And with the issuance of the NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy and the OSTP memo on public access to research, funders are mandating that research data should be well-described and, whenever possible, readily discoverable to enable re-use.

NIH Data Management and Sharing Policy: In October 2020 NIH released the final version of its Policy for Data Management and Sharing, with an effective date of January 25, 2023. The policy requires researchers seeking NIH funding for projects that generate scientific data to submit a Data Management and Sharing Plan (DMSP) “outlining how scientific data and any accompanying metadata will be managed and shared.” Although there may be legal, ethical, or technical factors that prevent the sharing of some data, researchers are expected to “maximize the appropriate sharing of scientific data,” including data that are not associated with a publication. To enhance the potential for data sharing and reuse, the policy also states, “NIH encourages data management and data sharing practices consistent with the FAIR data principles.”

FAIR principles: The FAIR principles were outlined in a 2022 article in the journal Scientific Data by Wilkinson et. al, a group of authors representing researchers, research institutions, industry, scholarly publishers, governmental agencies and funders. To enhance reproducibility and reusability, they suggested that data should be:

• Findable: assigned adequately descriptive, machine- and human-readable metadata that can be searched or crawled
• Accessible: retrievable by persistent identifiers, with clear statements about any required authentication or authorization steps 
• Interoperable: combinable with other data and compatible with applications for analysis, storage and processing
• Reusable: assigned clear, detailed and accessible licenses for usage, and described and formatted in ways that follow relevant disciplinary or domain standards

FAIRsharing.org is a registry developed to help researchers and those who support them fulfill the FAIR principles by enabling them to readily locate the recommended metadata and reporting standards for particular domains or types of data, identify appropriate repositories for data storage and access, and reference journal and funder policies. As of this writing the site contains over 1600 records for standards, nearly 2000 records for databases/repositories, and over 150 records for policies. 

The records are searchable by registry (standard, database, or policy), record type, subject, user tag, data domain or type, country, organization, or species. Results can be filtered by maintenance level (maintained or not), readiness level (ready, in development, uncertain, or deprecated), and whether a resource or set of resources has been recommended by a journal or funder (these resources are also categorized as Recommendations). 

Figure 2. FAIRsharing.org search of Registry: databases, Subjects: neuroscience, Domains: brain imaging, limited to resources recommended in journal or funder policies. Accessed 22 November 2022 at https://fairsharing.org/search?fairsharingRegistry=Database

A FAIRsharing.org resource record provides a short description of and a link to the resource; the relevant subjects, data domains, and taxonomic range; collections and recommendations (policies) in which the resource appears; other related standards and databases; associated tools; links to the organizations that fund and maintain the resource, as well as support links; data processes and conditions, including recommended or applied licenses; descriptive publications; and additional information such as cross-references.

Figure 3. FAIRsharing.org record for the NeuroVault database. Accessed 28 November 2022 at https://doi.org/10.25504/FAIRsharing.rm14bx

In addition to searching or browsing at the resource level users can search or browse Collections, which group resources by domain, project, or organization; see a list of stakeholder organizations including charitable foundations, companies, consortia, government bodies, labs, research institutes, and universities; and view statistics about the records, such as the top 10 metadata standards recommended by journal publishers, or the top 10 licenses for database content.

The future: Data are increasingly seen as a scholarly product that has value both in support and independently of publication. The NIH policy requires plans for management and sharing of all scientific data, defined as “the recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as of sufficient quality to validate and replicate research findings, regardless of whether the data are used to support scholarly publications” (emphasis added).

And data sharing expectations are spreading. The August 25, 2022 Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) memo on “Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research” recommends that all federal funding agencies require recipients “to make publications and their supporting data resulting from federally funded research publicly accessible without an embargo on their free and public release” (emphasis in original). FAIRsharing.org’s portal enables data management and sharing to be done efficiently and effectively.

Additional Resources

FAIRsharing.org: https://fairsharing.org/

Final NIH Policy for Data Management and Sharing: https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-21-013.html

GO FAIR: FAIR Principles: https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/

Office of Science and Technology Policy Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies: Ensuring Free, Immediate, and Equitable Access to Federally Funded Research: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/08-2022-OSTP-Public-Access-Memo.pdf

Wilkinson MD, Dumontier M, Aalbersberg IJ, et al. 2016. The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Scientific Data 3:160018. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18

Elliott Smith, Emerging Technologies & Bioinformatics Librarian, University of California Berkeley

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