FAIRagro - sign the FAIRness and Openness Commitment now

 

28​​.03.2025

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FAIRagro FAIRness and Openness Commitment – Sign Now & Let’s Move Together Towards a FAIR Data Future in Agriculture and Beyond

Agriculture today faces growing challenges, including increasing food demand amidst stagnating productivity, climate change, biodiversity loss, and the degradation of natural resources. Tackling these challenges requires integrated research and data-driven approaches across disciplines and scales to develop sustainable solutions.

Access to high-quality data is essential as the foundation for generating scientific knowledge. To promote the FAIR data principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability) and foster collaborative research data management (RDM) across disciplines and institutions in agricultural science, we are committed to making a difference.

Our mission is to build a scalable research data infrastructure (RDI) by connecting and further developing established RDIs across institutions and providing tailored RDM services to our community. Our goal is to make agricultural research data FAIR and enable collaborative research that drives innovation.

Join us in supporting a cultural shift towards FAIR and collaborative research data management practices in agricultural science and beyond! Sign our FAIRagro FAIRness and Openness Commitment* and become a FAIR ambassador within your institution or an institutional open science lighthouse!

Read the Commitment published at Zenedo here:
FAIRagro FAIRness and Openness Commitment (full text)

Get further information and sIgn the Commitment though the FAIRagro website:
FAIRagro FAIRness and Openness Commitment (with signatory form)

*NFDI4Earth first published the NFDI4Earth FAIRness and Openness Commitment in September 2024. FAIRagro strongly supports this commitment and has therefore adopted it for its community to advance the valuable process of promoting a FAIR data future in Agricultural Science together with other consortia under the umbrella of the NFDI.

As signatories:

We commit to advance FAIRness and Openness in Agricultural Sciences and beyond.

1. Commit to the mission of NFDI in bringing together research communities to provide data for the common good, and the role of FAIRagro as a facilitator of sustainable, collaboratively developed solutions in Agricultural Sciences.
2. Support and uphold, where appropriate and possible, the principles and values outlined in existing Open Science declarations and statements.
3. Be familiar with relevant data laws and acts, especially those related to agricultural data, in both national and European jurisdictions. These laws facilitate data sharing at both national and international levels.
4. Give credit to all sources underlying our research findings and, whenever possible, credit is given through proper citations.
5. Choose to publish Agricultural Sciences data in Agricultural Sciences domain repositories and other suitable research infrastructures that meet all four aspects of FAIR principles and consider the specific characteristics of Agricultural Sciences data.
6. Strengthen FAIR and Open Data practices by supporting educational networks, robust training programmes, and the production of educational materials that promote transparency and accessibility of research outputs.
7. Adopt Data Management Plans (DMP) as important tools for all research projects. These plans are invaluable for strategically planning data documentation, publication, and collaboratively monitoring data management activities. We seek and consider expert curation and guidance for them.
8. Where possible, use open and permissive data and software licences that legally enable the envisioned free and open sharing of Agricultural Sciences data.
9. Support and align scientific work with governing bodies and organisations that advance the underlying causes of this commitment.

We value data infrastructures and data experts.

10. Recognise the vital role that Agricultural Sciences domain repositories and their curation services play in achieving and preserving the highest possible FAIRness and Openness in the Agricultural Sciences. As researchers, institutions, and funding agencies, we endeavour to ensure the sustainability of these repositories and other relevant research infrastructures.
11. Collaborate with the Data Steward Service Center (DSSC) and repository managers and leverage their expertise to make Agricultural Sciences research outputs transparent, machine-readable, interoperable, and re-usable in the long term.
12. Adhere to and contribute to international standards for harmonising Agricultural Science data, metadata, data quality, and application programming interfaces (APIs). Support their implementation and development across research infrastructures in terms of barrier-free data exchange through FAIR Digital Objects, as this is crucial for effective interdisciplinary research and advancements in novel analysis methods such as Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning (AI & ML).