The Metroline - Steps for your FAIRification Workflow

STATUS: IN DEVELOPMENT WG REVIEW

The FAIR principles aim to make data: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable to maximize the reuse of (research) data. See this page for more information on FAIR.
Where do you start to make your dataset or other digital resource FAIR? Which steps are involved? What do these steps mean and, importantly, how do you practically do these steps? The FAIR metroline provides guidance to help you reach your FAIR goals.

The Metroline, shown in the image below, gives an overview of steps used by a variety of publications and initiatives to reach their FAIR goals. By properly describing what all of these steps entail and adding practical how-tos, the steps can be used to help researchers and data stewards make data more FAIR. The steps also provide guidance for onboarding of (meta)data in the Dutch National Health Data Catalogue.

As can be seen in the image above, the FAIR Metroline contains many steps. Depending on your project and goals only a select number of steps may be relevant. Thus, each project will have its own workflow:

Given the large number of steps, we will prioritise adding detailed how-to descriptions and real-life examples of process steps based on the development of the Dutch National Health Data Catalogue. Using this approach we ensure focus is on steps that are relevant right now. For the current status of the steps see this page.

Furthermore, we are also developing FAIR steps together with funders, to incorporate FAIR into projects from the start. The exact approach is still under development.