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NFDI Physical Sciences Joint Colloquium

The NFDI Physical Sciences Joint Colloquium on
Strategy for and psychosocial aspects of realizing FAIR data processes
with Nancy Washton, Physical Sciences Division, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, USA
took place on November 10, 2022 online.
This event was hosted by NFDI4Cat.

The last decade has given rise to increased scrutiny on the need for domains in physical sciences to generate robust and reusable data that can be accessed by the broader research community. Adoption of FAIR principles has allowed research communities that rely on large, shared data sets to approach data equity and thereby advance inclusion and knowledge across the globe as they speed discovery. However, the entirety of physical sciences has yet to embrace FAIR principles, with specific subdomains at various stages of moving toward full adoption. Chemistry and many of its subdomains lag materials science and physics in mounting a concerted communal effort for adopting processes that allow FAIR data principles and structures to be realized. Barriers to adoption are technical and psychosocial, and the interplay between them. This presentation will discuss a strategy that addresses both key point: technical and psychosocial. In the absence of a robust conceptual and technical framework that allows researchers to easily record, aggregate and store the various parts of a coherent data set, and an understanding of positive and negative beliefs related to shared data, the goal of FAIR data available in the public domain will not be achieved.