The journey towards FAIR: A story from the marine domain

The marine subdomain consists of a diverse data landscape, with several Research Infrastructures (RIs) involved. In the ENVRI-FAIR project the marine domain is represented by Euro-ARGO, ICOS (Marine), EMSO, and LifeWatch (Marine) as RIs as listed on the ESFRI roadmap, and SeaDataNet as European marine data management infrastructure. The overarching goal of ENVRI-FAIR is that all participating research infrastructures (RIs) will improve their level of FAIRness and become ready for connecting their data repositories and services to the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

To achieve this goal, the marine domain partners have first analysed and assessed the FAIRNess level of each participating RI and identified the necessary actions to improve their individual FAIRness. They then created a roadmap and implementation plan that led to the development of an Essential Ocean Variable (EOV) demonstrator, highlighting the FAIRness achievements.   

In this presentation we will discuss in more detail the RI FAIR assessment and analysis process and show how it evolved alongside the evolution of the FAIR assessment tools themselves and the harmonisation required to be meaningful and useful. We will then walk you through the analysis of this assessment that led to a list of strengths and weaknesses per RI, and the solutions to overcome the weaknesses for each individual of the FAIR principle. Finally, we will present the outcomes of the required upgrades, adoptions of standards, improvements, developments and services that were developed as part of the implementation plan and led to the construction of the EOV demonstrator product.