FAIRsFAIR WP7 ultimately aims to foster the uptake of FAIR data-related skills and material in university curricula and programmes across levels and disciplines. To do so, project partners involved in WP7 have developed two practical tools guiding universities in developing new teaching and training activities that can support the ability of students and researchers to put the FAIR principles into practice.

• The adoption handbook “How to be FAIR with your data – A teaching and training handbook for higher education institutions”

The handbook provides ready-to-use model lesson plans on a variety of topics, including FAIR data, Data Management Plans (DMPs), repositories, data creation and reuse. Furthermore, it offers FAIR competence profiles and learning outcomes for the bachelor, master and doctoral levels as well as information on course design and the implementation of the FAIR principles on the institutional level. The handbook is available in three versions: as a project deliverable on Zenodo, as an Open Access PDF and as a print publication.

• The report “Good practices in FAIR competence education”

The deliverable presents a collection of seven good practices highlighting stories of successful integration of Research Data Management (RDM) and FAIR data-related skills in university curricula and training. In this report, universities will find points of inspiration and practical examples of how fellow institutions and organisations in the higher education sector addressed the need for more RDM and FAIR data-related skills to be taught at the bachelor, master and doctoral levels. The report is available on Zenodo, here.

The handbook and the good practices report are deeply rooted in previous results and activities achieved by WP7 partners within their efforts to map and advance the integration of FAIR data skills in higher education curricula. These include:

• A landscape analysis mapping the state of play of FAIR data education in Europe;
• A desk research collecting a diverse set of FAIR data resources and initiatives available in Europe;
• The project’s “FAIR Competence Framework for Higher Education (FAIR4HE)” proposing core competences for FAIR data education.

To promote the results and gather feedback for the deliverables, WP7 organised two series of workshop to bring results from FAIRsFAIR closer to universities and key stakeholders and gather feedback from the community.

Stakeholder workshops

This series of three online workshops explored different topics related to FAIR data education and was organised in collaboration with stakeholder organisations in the field of higher education and research to maximise synergies and foster cooperation.

• First stakeholder workshop on “Integrating FAIR data science competences in higher education curricula: the role of academic and research libraries”, organised during LIBER 2020 Annual Conference on 23 June 2020

Results from the workshop are available here. The recording of the event can be found here.

• Second stakeholder workshop on “National policy and support actions for research data skills – impact and experiences”, co-organised with OpenAIRE on 28 April 2021

Results from the workshop are available here. The recording of the event can be found here.

• Third stakeholder workshop on “Learning lessons from FAIR data implementation. Good practices from universities across Europe”, organised during the Open Science Fair 2021 on 20 September 2021.

Results from the workshop are available here. The recording of the event can be found here.

University workshops

EUA together with partners from FAIRsFAIR WP7 organised three online workshops to support higher education institutions in embedding FAIR competences in their curricular and research training programmes.

• First university workshop on “FAIR data competences in doctoral education programmes”, co-organised with the University of Minho on 26-27 May 2021.

Results from the workshop are available here. The recording of the event can be found here (day 1) and here (day 2).

• Second university workshop on “Training the trainers: Data Management and FAIR data principles in university curricula”, co-organised with the University of Amsterdam on 15 September 2021.

Results from the workshop are available here. The recording of the event can be found here.

• Third university workshop on “Practical implementation of FAIR-related content in university curricula and teaching”, co-organised with the University of Göttingen on 12 October 2021.

Results from the workshop are available here. The recording of the event can be found here.

The FAIRsFAIR project addresses the development and concrete realisation of an overall knowledge infrastructure on academic quality data management, procedures, standards, metrics and related matters, based on the FAIR data principles.

FAIRsFAIR will play a key role in the development of global standards for FAIR certification of repositories and the data within them contributing to those policies and practices that will turn the EOSC programme into a functioning infrastructure. By the end of its activities, FAIRsFAIR will provide a platform for using and implementing the FAIR principles in the day-to-day work of European research data professionals and repositories.

On the technical level, the project seeks to support the development and certification of repositories. By doing so it will contribute to the broader change required to achieve widespread adoption of FAIR practices within the EOSC and beyond.

The objectives of FAIRsFAIR in a nutshell are to:

• Improve interoperability of FAIR resources;
• Increase production and use of FAIR data;
• Develop a capability maturity model towards FAIR certification;
• Build a network of Trusted Digital Repositories;
• Set up a FAIR competences centre for scientific communities;
• Embed FAIR data education in university programmes.

• Starting date: March 1, 2019
• Duration: 36 months
• 22 partners from 8 member states
• 6 core partners: DANS-KNAW (project coordinator), CSC – IT Center for Science, the Digital Curation Centre (DCC), Trust-IT, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), and EUA
• WP7 partners: University of Minho (Portugal), the University of Göttingen (Germany) the University of Amsterdam (The Netherlands), DCC (United Kingdom) and the STFC (United Kingdom).