Proud to be part of the EOSC Task Force on FAIR Metrics and Data Quality and present our whitepaper “Community-driven Governance of FAIRness Assessment: An Open Issue, an Open Discussion” (Mark D. Wilkinson; Susanna-Assunta Sansone; Eva Méndez; Romain David; Richard Dennis; David Hecker; Mari Kleemola; Carlo Lacagnina; Anastasija Nikiforova; Leyla Jael Castro) published by European Commission, of course, in an open access, here.
“Although FAIR Research Data Principles are targeted at and implemented by different communities, research disciplines, and research stakeholders (data stewards, curators, etc.), there is no conclusive way to determine the level of FAIRness intended or required to make research artefacts (including, but not limited to, research data) Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.
The FAIR Principles cover all types of digital objects, metadata, and infrastructures. However, they focus their narrative on data features that support their reusability. FAIR defines principles, not standards, and therefore they do not propose a mechanism to achieve the behaviours they describe in an attempt to be technology/implementation neutral.
FAIR is evolving in some expected and some unexpected ways. FAIR “Reusability” sub-principle R1.3 states that “(meta)data should meet domain-relevant community standards,” which predicts a proliferation of FAIR interpretations by individual communities as they select their preferred approach to FAIRness. Similarly, as expected, there is an active movement around the adaptation of the FAIR Principles to digital objects other than data (e.g., software and workflows), again with individual communities interpreting what FAIRness means in these expanded contexts. However, there have also been attempts to expand the FAIR Principles themselves in recent years, including features of digital objects beyond reusability, including popularity (reuse/citation), reproducibility, reliability, data quality, etc. All of this is occurring with no overall coordination or planning.
A range of FAIR assessment metrics and tools have been designed that measure FAIRness. Unfortunately, the same digital objects assessed by different tools often exhibit widely different outcomes because of these independent interpretations of FAIR. This results in confusion among the publishers, the funders, and the users of digital research objects. Moreover, in the absence of a standard and transparent definition of what constitutes FAIR behaviours, there is a temptation to define existing approaches as being FAIR-compliant rather than having FAIR define the expected behaviours. While it is anticipated that communities will define domain-specific FAIR metrics and tests, it is desirable to avoid “gaming the system” and have broadly agreed-upon approaches to FAIRness that do not favour a specific implementation of technology.
These observations suggest a growing need to align the different interpretations of the FAIR Principles. However, this whitepaper does not suggest that the FAIR Principles themselves require governance. Indeed, the document argues that the Principles should remain untouched. Specialised communities should extend/edit those Principles to adapt and make them more relevant to their community and their specific research outcome intended to be FAIR.
This whitepaper identifies three high-level stakeholder categories -FAIR decision and policymakers, FAIR custodians, and FAIR practitioners – and provides examples outlining specific stakeholders’ (hypothetical but anticipated) needs. It also examines possible models for governance based on the existing peer efforts, standardisation bodies, and other ways to acknowledge specifications and potential benefits. This whitepaper can serve as a starting point to foster an open discussion around FAIRness governance and the mechanism(s) that could be used to implement it, to be trusted, broadly representative, appropriately scoped, and sustainable”
Cite as: Mark D. Wilkinson, Susanna-Assunta Sansone, Eva Méndez, Romain David, Richard Dennis, David Hecker, Mari Kleemola, Carlo Lacagnina, Anastasija Nikiforova, & Leyla Jael Castro. (2022). Community-driven Governance of FAIRness Assessment: An Open Issue, an Open Discussion [version 1; peer review: awaiting peer review]. Open Res Europe 2022, 2:146 (https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.15364.1)
In this post I would like to briefly elaborate on a truly insightful 14th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management (IC3K), where I was honored to participate as a speaker, presenting our paper “Putting FAIR principles in the context of research information: FAIRness for CRIS and CRIS for FAIRness” (authors: Otmane Azeroual, Joachim Schopfel and Janne Polonen, and Anastasija Nikiforova), and as a chair of two absolutely amazing sessions, where live and fruitful discussions took place, which is a real indicator of the success of such! And spoiler, our paper was recognized as the Best Paper! (i.e., best paper award goes to… :))
IC3K consists of three subconferences, namely 14th International Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Information Retrieval (KDIR), 14th International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Ontology Development (KEOD), and 14th International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Systems (KMIS), where the latter is the one, to which my paper has been accepted, and also won the Best Paper Award – I know, this is a repetition, but I am glad to receive it, same as the euroCRIS community is proud for us – read more here…!
Briefly about our study, with which we mostly wanted to urge a call for action in the area of CRIS and their FAIRness. Of course, this is all about the digitization, which take place in various domain, including but not limited to the research domain, where it refers to the increasing integration and analysis of research information as part of the research data management process. However, it is not clear whether this research information is actually used and, more importantly, whether this information and data are of sufficient quality, and value and knowledge could be extracted from them. It is considered that FAIR principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reusability) represent a promising asset to achieve this. Since their publication (by one of the colleagues I work together in European Open Science Cloud), they have rapidly proliferated and have become part of both national and international research funding programs. A special feature of the FAIR principles is the emphasis on the legibility, readability, and understandability of data. At the same time, they pose a prerequisite for data and their reliability, trustworthiness, and quality. In this sense, the importance of applying FAIR principles to research information and respective systems such as Current Research Information Systems (CRIS, also known as RIS, RIMS), which is an underrepresented subject for research, is the subject of our study. What should be kept in mind is that the research information is not just research data, and research information management systems such as CRIS are not just repositories for research data. They are much more complex, alive, dynamic, interactive and multi-stakeholder objects. However, in the real-world they are not directly subject to the FAIR research data management guiding principles. Thus, supporting the call for the need for a ”one-stop-shop and register-once use-many approach”, we argue that CRIS is a key component of the research infrastructure landscape / ecosystem, directly targeted and enabled by operational application and the promotion of FAIR principles. We hypothesize that the improvement of FAIRness is a bidirectional process, where CRIS promotes FAIRness of data and infrastructures, and FAIR principles push further improvements to the underlying CRIS. All in all, three propositions on which we elaborate in our paper and invite everyone representing this domain to think of, are:
1. research information management systems (CRIS) are helpful to assess the FAIRness of research data and data repositories;
2. research information management systems (CRIS) contribute to the FAIRness of other research infrastructure;
3. research information management systems (CRIS) can be improved through the application of the FAIR principles.
Here, we have raised a discussion on this topic showing that the improvement of FAIRness is a dual or bidirectional process, where CRIS promotes and contributes to the FAIRness of data and infrastructures, and FAIR principles push for further improvement in the underlying CRIS data model and format, positively affecting the sustainability of these systems and underlying artifacts. CRIS are beneficial for FAIR, and FAIR is beneficial for CRIS. Nevertheless, as pointed out by (Tatum and Brown, 2018), the impact of CRIS on FAIRness is mainly focused on the (1) findability (“F” in FAIR) through the use of persistent identifiers and (2) interoperability (“I” in FAIR) through standard metadata, while the impact on the other two principles, namely accessibility and reusability (“A” and “R” in FAIR) seems to be more indirect, related to and conditioned by metadata on licensing and access. Paraphrasing the statement that “FAIRness is necessary, but not sufficient for ‘open’” (Tatum and Brown, 2018), our conclusion is that “CRIS are necessary but not sufficient for FAIRness”.
This study differs significantly from what I typically talk about, but it was to contribute to it, thereby sharing the experience I gain in European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), and respective Task Force I am involved in – “FAIR metrics and data quality”. It also allowed me to provide some insights on what we are dealing with within this domain and how our activities contribute to the currently limited body of knowledge on this topic.
A bit about the sessions I chaired and topics raised within them, which were very diverse but equally relevant and interesting. I was kindly invited to chair two sessions, namely “Big Data and Analytics” and “Knowledge management Strategies and Implementations”, where the papers on the following topics were presented:
Decision Support for Production Control based on Machine Learning by Simulation-generated Data (Konstantin Muehlbauer, Lukas Rissmann, Sebastian Meissner, Landshut University of Applied Sciences, Germany);
Exploring the Test Driven Development of a Fraud Detection Application using the Google Cloud Platform (Daniel Staegemann, Matthias Volk, Maneendra Perera, Klaus Turowski, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg, Germany) – this paper was also recognized as the best student paper;
Decision Making with Clustered Majority Judgment (Emanuele D’ajello , Davide Formica, Elio Masciari, Gaia Mattia, Arianna Anniciello, Cristina Moscariello, Stefano Quintarelli, Davide Zaccarella, University of Napoli Federico II, Copernicani, Milano, Italy.
Virtual Reality (VR) Technology Integration in the Training Environment Leads to Behaviour Change (Amy Rosellini, University of North Texas, USA)
Innovation in Boutique Hotels in Valletta, Malta: A Multi-level Investigation (Kristina, University of Malta, Malta)
And, of course, as is the case for each and every conference, the keynotes are panelists are those, who gather the highest number of attendees, which is obvious, considering the topic they elaborate on, as well as the topics they raise and discuss. IC3K is not an exception, and the conference started with a very insightful discussion on Current Data Security Regulations and the discussion on whether they Serve or rather Restrict the Application of the Tools and Techniques of AI. Each of three speakers, namely Catholijn Jonker, Bart Verheijen, and Giancarlo Guizzardi, presented their views considering the domain they represent. As a result, both were very different, but at the same time leading you to “I cannot agree more” feeling!
One of panelists – Catholijn Jonker (TU Delft) delivered then an absolutely exceptional keynote speech on Self-Reflective Hybrid Intelligence: Combining Human with Artificial Intelligence and Logic. Enjoyed not only the content, but also the style, where the propositions are critically elaborated on, pointing out that they are not indented to serve as a silver bullet, and the scope, as well as side-effects should be determined and considered. Truly insightful and, I would say, inspiring talk.
All in all, thank you, organizers – INSTICC (Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication), for bringing us together!
Considering that in last weeks I was pretty active in delivering very many talks, let me use this post to summarize some of them thereby remaining them in my memory as well as allowing you, my dear reader, to pick up some ideas or navigate to some projects (both projects, initiatives, postgraduate programs, joint workshops or “lunchs” for business and academia) of your interest. So this post is less about self-advertisement and my role in the below discussed events as both panelist, keynote, guest lecturer, invited speaker and expert, but more about very interesting projects, initiatives and labs currently running in different countries and at different scales – local, national, regional and international. And as “thank you” for the organizers of each of them, I would like to shed a light on them in this post, drawing your attention to them!
All in all, this post is about participating as a panelist for One Conference 2022, keynote for African Smart Cities Lab projects’ workshop (Morocco, Ghana, Tunisia, South Africa, Rwanda, Benin, Switzerland), Guest Lecture for master and doctoral students of the Federal University of Technology – Paraná (UTFPR, Postgraduate Program in Production Engineering, Brasil), and invited speaker / expert for monthly “Virtual Brown Bag Lunch” (Mexico), and EFSA & EBTC joint project (Italy) on the creation of a standard for data exchange in support of automation of Systematic Review.
So, let’s start with the most spontaneous, namely “Integration of open data and artificial intelligence in the development of smart cities in Africa” workshop organized as part of the African Cities Lab Project, where I was invited as a keynote speaker. Actually, African Smart Cities Lab project is a very interesting initiative I recently was glad to get familiar with. It is a joint initiative led by École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland), the Kwame Nkrumah’ University of Science and Technology, Kumasi (Ghana), the UM6P – Mohammed VI Polytechnic University (Maroc), Sèmè City campus (Benin), the Faculty of Sciences of Bizerta – University of Carthage (Tunisia), the University of Cape Town (South Africa), and the University of Rwanda that aims to create a digital education platform on urban development in Africa, offering quality MOOC and online, continuing education training for professionals. It is also expected to act as a forum for the exchange of digital educational resources and the management and governance of African cities to foster sustainable urban development. The very first workshop took place July 5 in an online mode, where 9 speakers were invited to share their experience on this topic and allow setting the scene for the development of African Smart Cities, considering their potential, but also some bottlenecks.
All in all, two very fruitful sessions with presentations delivered by me, Vitor Pessoa Colombo, Constant Cap, Oualid Ali, Jérôme Chenal, Nesrine Chehata, AKDIM Tariq, Christelle Gracia Gbado, Willy Franck Sob took place and raised a lot of questions, finding the answers for many of them. My talk was titled “Open data and crowdsourced data as enablers and drivers for smart African cities” (see slides below…)
Here, let me immediately mention another activity – a Guest Lecture “The role of open data in the development of sustainable smart cities and smart society“, I delivered to students of the Federal University of Technology – Parana (UTFPR, Brazil) and, more precisely so-called PPGEP program – Postgraduate Program in Production Engineering (port. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Engenharia de Produção), in scope of which I was pleasured to raise a discussion on three topics of particular interest – open data, Smart City, and Society 5.0, which are actually very interrelated. This also allowed me to refer to one of our recent studies – Transparency of open data ecosystems in smart cities: definition and assessment of the maturity of transparency in 22 smart cities– published together with my colleagues – Martin Lnenicka, Mariusz Luterek, Otmane Azeroual, Dandison Ukpabi, Visvadis Valtenbergs, and Renata Machova in Sustainable Cities and Society (Q1, Impact Factor: 7.587, SNIP: 2.347, CiteScore: 10.7).
And now, it’s time to turn to two events organized by European Food Safety Authority (EFSA). The first and probably the most “crowded” due to a very high rate of the attendance was the ONE Conference 2022 (Health, Environment, Society), which took place between June 21 and 24, Brussels, Belgium. It was co-organised by European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and its European sister agencies European Environment Agency, European Medicines Agency, European Chemicals Agency, European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), but if you are an active follower of my blog, you know this already, same as probably remember that I posted about this event previously inviting you to join us in Belgium or online. Since I have elaborated on the course of the event, its main objectives and tracks, I will not repeat this information. Instead, let me briefly summarize key takeaways with a particular focus on the panel for which I served as a panelist – the “ONE society” thematic track, panel discussion“Turning open science into practice: causality as a showcase”. It was a very nice experience and opportunity for sharing our experience on obstacles, benefits and the feasibility of adopting open science approaches, and elaborate on the following questions (although they were more but these one are my favorites): 💡Can the use of open science increase trust to regulatory science? Or does it increase the risk to lose focus, introduce conflicting interests and, thus, threaten reputation? What are the barriers to make open science viable in support to the scientific assessment process carried out by public organizations? 💡What are the tools/ methods available enabling, supporting and sustaining long term open science initiatives today and what could be envisaged for the future? 💡Do we need a governance to handle open data in support to scientific assessment processes carried out by regulatory science bodies? 💡How the data coming from different sources can be harmonized making it appropriate for further use and combination?
These and many more questions were discussed by panelists with different background and expertise, which were nicely presented by European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) breaking down our experience in four categories – social science (Leonie Dendler, German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment BfR), open data expert (Anastasija Nikiforova,) EOSC Association, University of Tartu, Institute of Computer Science, lawyer (Thomas Margoni, KU Leuven ), regulatory science (Sven Schade, Joint Research Centre, EU Science, Research and Innovation). Many thanks Laura Martino, Federica Barrucci, Claudia Cascio, Laura Ciccolallo, Marios Georgiadis, Giovanni Iacono, Yannick Spill (European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)), and of course to Tony Smith and Jean-François Dechamp (European Commission). For more information, refer to this page.
And as a follow-up for this event, I was kindly invited by EFSA to contribute to setting the scene on the concept of ‘standards for data exchange’, ‘standards for data content’ and ‘standards for data generation’ as part of European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and Evidence-Based Toxicology Collaboration (EBTC) ongoing project on thecreation of a standard for data exchange in support of automation of Systematic Review (as the answer to the call made in “Roadmap for actions on artificial intelligence for evidence management in risk assessment”). It was really nice to know that what we are doing in EOSC Association (Task Force “FAIR metrics and data quality”) is of interest for our colleagues from EFSA and EBTC. Also, it was super nice to listen other points of view and get involved in the discussion with other speakers and organisers – Elisa Aiassa, Angelo Cafaro, Fulvio Barizzone, Ermanno Cavalli, Marios Georgiadis, Irene Pilar, Irene Muñoz Guajardo, Federica Barrucci, Daniela Tomcikova, Carsten Behring, Irene Da Costa, Raquel Costa, Maeve Cushen, Laura Martino, Yannick Spill, Davide Arcella, Valeria Ercolano, Vittoria Flamini, Kim Wever, Gunn Vist, Annette Bitsch, Daniele Wikoff, Carlijn Hooijmans, Sebastian Hoffmann, Seneca Fitch, Paul Whaley, Katya Tsaioun, Alexandra Bannach-Brown, Ashley Elizabeth Muller, Anne Thessen, Julie McMurray, Brian Alper, Khalid Shahin, Bryn Rhodes, Kaitlyn Hair. The next workshop is expected to take place in September with the first draft ready by the end of this year and presented during one of the upcoming events. More info on this will follow 🙂
In addition, I was asked by my Mexican colleagues to deliver an invited talk for monthly “Virtual Brown Bag Lunch Talks” intended for the Information Technologies, Manufacturing, and Engineering Employees in Companies associated with Index Manufacturing Association (Mexico, web-based). After discussing several topics with the organizers of this event, we decided that this time the most relevant talk for the audience would be “Data Security as a top priority or what Internet of Things (IoT) Search engines know about you“. Again, if you are an active follower, you will probably realize quickly that it is based on a list of my previous studies – study#1, study#2, study#3 and book chapter.
Certificates from Universidad Autononma de Tamaulipas & Index (Mexico) and Universidad Techlogica Federal de Parana (Brasil)
All in all, while these were just a few activities I was busy with during the last weeks and, these weeks were indeed very busy but extreeeemely interesting with so many different events! I am grateful to all those people, who invited me to take part in them and believe that this is just one of the opportunities we had to collaborate and there are many more in the future!
The ONE Conference 2022 (Health, Environment, Society) – a four-day event happening in Brussels and online, is coming! Register and meet me there ️(Brussels & online, 21-24 June) as one of panelists of the “Turning open science into practice: causality as a showcase” thematic session as part of “ONE society” thematic track.
ONE Conference 2022 provides its attendees with a series of break-out sessions grouped in four thematic tracks – ONE Life, ONE Planet, ONE Society and MANY Ways. The sessions are complemented by side events and networking opportunities for both in-person and online participants, where some side events, in the form of workshops, will take place before the formal start of the conference.
The ONE Conference 2022 is co-organised by EFSA and its European sister agencies – the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control [ECDC], the European Chemicals Agency [ECHA], the European Environment Agency [EEA] and the European Medicines Agency [EMA] and the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC), with the ambition of embracing a ONE Health and ONE Society approaches.
Briefly about the above mentioned thematic tracks:
the ONE Society sessions will put the societal dimension of food safety and its ecosystem in the spotlight: from the role of society in policy making, to collaboration and partnerships right through to bringing research closer to policy. Dolors Montserrat from the European Parliament’s ENVI Committee will speak on the panel addressing citizens’ participation in EU decision-making, while former Dutch Minister Gerda Verburg from the Scaling up Nutrition (SUN) Movement features in the session on collaboration among actors in the food safety field. Michael Catchpole, Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), will moderate the discussion on how ENVI agencies can work together to support research and bridge the gap between research and policy. Meanwhile, Shani Evenstein Sigalov, member of the Wikimedia Foundation and lecturer at the University of Tel Aviv, will share her views on opening up regulatory science.
the ONE Life sessions will focus on the questions on how to ensure safe, healthy and sustainable food, where Francesco Branca (Director of the Department of Nutrition and Food Safety of the World Health Organization (WHO)) will share his views on how to define healthy diets within sustainability boundaries as part of a session on sustainability and food security. Matias Zurbrigen (Head of the Institute of Synthetic Biology of the University of Dusseldorf) will consider safety aspects relating to new food production approaches such as synthetic biology as part of a session on innovative foods. Meanwhile, Ilaria Capua from the University of Florida, will focus on the post-pandemic environment and the concept of Circular Health as part of a discussion on improving our understanding of infectious diseases. How to ensure safety assessments keep pace with the emergence of new diseases will also be discussed. Luisa Peixe, professor at the University of Porto and member of EFSA’s Panel on Biological Hazards, will discuss the growing challenge of antimicrobial resistance (AMR)focussing on the link to food-producing environments.
the ONE Planet sessions will focus on the environmental dimension of food safety and sustainability, where Serenella Sala from the Joint Research Centre (JRC) of the European Commission is among the experts who will share their views on how to develop a framework for sustainability assessments to measure progress made towards environmental goals. Annette Aldrich from the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN), an expert in ecotoxicology and member of EFSA’s Panel on Plant Protection Products and their Residues, will explain why a paradigm shift is needed in the environmental risk assessment of pesticides. Helen Elizabeth Roy from the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology will feature in discussions on plant protectionin the face of globalisation, particularly how global trade and climate change will affect plant pests, invasive species and diseases. Meanwhile, Linda Keeling, professor of Animal Welfare at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), will speak about the links between animal welfare and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in a session dedicated to improving animal welfare and reducing environmental impacts in relation to animal-sourced food.
the MANY WAYS sessions will cover topics ranging from Artificial Intelligence (AI) to new approach methodologies (NAMs), where Raluca Crisan, founder and CTO of the testing platform ETIQ AI, will speak in the session related to integrating AI technology and big data in food safety. Chris Gennings, professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, will discuss how the risk assessment of combined exposure to multiple chemicals can be developed. The session on new approach methodologies (NAMs) moderated by Maurice Whelan, head of the EU Reference Laboratory for alternatives to animal testing at the Joint Research Centre (JRC), will explore opportunities for moving beyond animal testing to in vitro and in silico approaches. The session onEndocrine Disruptors (EDs)will feature Andreas Kortenkamp, professor at Brunel University, who will deliver a talk on the science behind the identification of endocrine disruptors for humans and non-target organisms. The session will also look at benefits of shifting to a more integrated assessment for chemicals as a whole. Sangeeta Khare from the National Center for Toxicological Research of the US Food and Drug Administration will address risk assessment criteria for gastrointestinal toxicity induced by xenobiotics as part of a session on the microbiome. The session will examine the evidence base connecting the microbiome, chemicals and human health.
the closing plenary to wrap up the four-day programme will reflect on the outcomes of the thematic (break-out) sessions. The discussion will also address how the One Health principles could help advance food safety assessments, and how more integrated, cross-sectoral and collaborative health assessments could inform policies shaping the transition towards more sustainable food systems. Sandra Gallina, the European Commission’s Director-General for Health and Food Safety, will outline the EU’s policy vision for the transition towards more sustainable and resilient food systems. Bernhard Url, EFSA’s Executive Director, will bring the conference to a close with some concluding remarks.
But let’s take a step back to the session “ONE society” thematic track I emphasized before and “Turning open science into practice: causality as a showcase” thematic session, in which I am involved as one of four panelists, invited to share my experience on the data quality, open science and open data questions in both academia and industry with the reference to the European Open Science Cloud I represent (Task Force “FAIR metrics and data quality”) and my previous experience working as IT-expert at the Latvian Biomedical Research and Study Centre, BBMRI-ERIC Latvian National Node. This session is devoted to the open science movement resulted in the demand for transparent and accessible-to-all scientific processes. Open science promotes and supports research collaboration and co-creation, including public participation in the scientific process via crowdsourcing data, methods, computational capacity and scientific knowledge. The adoption of a more participatory approach offers new opportunities to regulatory science organizations. It helps them extend the pool of data, expertise and knowledge from which to draw, thus accelerating their preparedness to address complex questions. It can also help in enhancing the public understanding of science, and in finally reducing citizens’ scepticism. An open science approach also poses challenges, including the need to monitor the accuracy and reliability of open data as well as their possible misuse. The session will offer an opportunity for sharing experiences on obstacles, benefits and the feasibility of adopting open science approaches in the context of regulatory science. The showcase example will focus on causality, i.e. the relationship between a cause and an effect. With larger availability of open access data, including those gathered using high-throughput techniques, unprecedented options for deeper insights into causality have emerged. Using causality as an illustrative example, the session intends to advance the discussion on how the principles of open science can be routinely implemented in the scientific activities performed by the European institutions. The guiding questions are: Can institutions benefit from open data and the open science movement, and if so, how? can participatory science accelerate finding solutions to quantitatively integrate heterogeneous sources to address causality? In other words, Whether and how open data currently available can be used to address the assessment of causal association between an agent and an effect in the regulatory domain? What are possible benefits and challenges from their use? How to guarantee that data and knowledge generated by an open science approach are accurate and reliable enough for use by regulatory science organisations? Which concrete actions need to be put in place to implement open science principles in the context of regulatory science? How to revise the legal framework to address new challenges related to personal data protection and intellectual property right? Although I am sure we will define many more questions to be asked and answered – hopefully answered 🙂
To sum up, this thematic session intends to advance the discussion on how the principles of open science can be routinely implemented in the scientific activities performed by the European Agencies/Institutions. Causality will be discussed as a case study topic, which, in fact, is among the most challenging questions which EU institutions are required to answer.
All in all, it seems that the session should be incredibly interesting with many perspectives covered by its participants, with the coordinator of this session – Laura Martino, session contributors – Federica Barrucci, Claudia Cascio, Laura Ciccolallo, Marios Georgiadis, Giovanni Iacono, Yannick Spill both representing European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), and panelists – me – Anastasija Nikiforova representing both the EOSC European Open Science Cloud Task Force ‘FAIR metrics and data quality’ and University of Tartu, Institute of Computer Science, Leonie Dendler from the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), Sven Schade representing Joint Research Centre (JRC), Foteini Zampati.
Anastasija Nikiforova, PhD 