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Working Principles

Within the LIFES community we adhere to the following principles:

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  • Commitment to the FAIR Principles

  • As open as possible, as restricted as necessary

  • As distributed as possible, as centralized as necessary

  • Follow the ‘hourglass’ approach: maximum freedom to implement

  • Prevent single points of failure, or provider lock-in

Commitment to the FAIR Principles

The FAIR Guiding Principles provide guidance when improving Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability of digital resources. But they do not dictate specific technological implementations. LIFES believes that whatever FAIR implementation choices are made, they should always ensure, as much as possible, interoperability, machine-actionability, global participation and convergence towards accessible, robust, widespread and consistent FAIR implementations. 

 

Towards this end, the GO FAIR Foundation, one of the founding members of LIFES, has consolidated from the community of FAIR experts, explicit interpretations of the FAIR Principles and implementation considerations. The aim is to provide a reference for continuing coherent dialogue on "what FAIR is" and a target, with minimal guarantees on machine-actionability, to which the community can confidently build towards. Following closely Jacobsen et al [2], the GO FAIR Foundation's interpretations are provided here as referenceable webpages

F1. (Meta)data are assigned a globally unique and persistent identifier  
F2. Data are described with rich metadata  
F3. Metadata clearly and explicitly include the identifier of the data they describe  
F4. (Meta)data are registered or indexed in a searchable resource  

 

A1. (Meta)data are retrievable by their identifier using a standardized communications protocol  
A1.1 The protocol is open, free, and universally implementable  
A1.2 The protocol allows for an authentication and authorization procedure, where necessary  
A2. Metadata are accessible, even when the data are no longer available  

 

I1. (Meta)data use a formal, accessible, shared, and broadly applicable language for knowledge representation  
I2. (Meta)data use vocabularies that follow FAIR principles  
I3. (Meta)data include qualified references to other (meta)data  

 

R1. (Meta)data are richly described with a plurality of accurate and relevant attributes  
R1.1 (Meta)data are released with a clear and accessible data usage license  
R1.2 (Meta)data are associated with detailed provenance  
R1.3 (Meta)data meet domain-relevant community standards  
 

As open as possible, as restricted as necessary

In academia, the dominant opinion is that, if possible,  all data and accompanying services should be open and free, wherever possible. LIFES supports that general view. However, in practice, and especially in a born public private partnership such as LIFES, we deal with commercial and professional tools and services, with privacy and proprietary concerns around data, or even national security issues, and other reasons for data or services to be restricted in accessibility and reuse.  

 

Legitimate reasons may therefore exist to keep data in environments with controlled and restricted access. The A in FAIR recognizes this, where  accessible means under well defined conditions. In the spirit of the machine actionability core of FAIR, (virtual) machines should be as well served in terms of Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI), and understanding the conditions for reuse of data and other digital objects as people. 

As distributed as possible, as centralized as necessary

The FAIR guiding principles do not explicitly require or recommend distributed approaches. However, in the spirit of the ‘Equitable Internet of FAIR data and services', LIFES members focus on the use of distributed approaches wherever possible. Reasons are not only to keep ‘data at the source’ (including proper curation and metadata at the source for privacy reasons, enabling GDPR compliant data visiting for example), but also security aspects (distributed systems are more difficult to hack), distribution of workload and costs (including the ability of people in low-resource environments to participate), and, less options for vendor-lock in.

 

This commitment is therefore meant to stimulate the most equitable, open and transparent ecosystem possible, with a level playing field and a ‘net neutrality aspect’ with full respect for ‘privacy by design’, ideally with the control over consent for reuse of personal data for particular purposes at the level of the individual (or designated proxy) and for other sensitive data by the data owner or custodian.

Follow the ‘hourglass’ approach: maximum freedom to implement

The hourglass shape is meant to indicate increasing 'freedom to operate' (top and bottom) with only an absolute minimal standard at the center (FAIR Digital Objects). Raw data (top) can be generated using any tools that are preferred, while data analysis (bottom) can also involve any tools that are preferred.

Prevent single points of failure, or provider lock-in

LIFES strongly supports the principles of equitable access to data, information and knowledge for all, as a key feature of the envisioned Equitable Internet of FAIR Data and Services. Deliberate strategies for vendor- or provider lock in (both in the private and the public sector) are considered highly undesirable. Not only because they will introduce single points of failure in the ecosystem, but also because unequal and privileged access (for instance unfairly targeting certain communities or groups without a legitimate basis) is against the principle of equity and open science.

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