FAIRshake : Mount Sinai Researchers Develop Software to Measure the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability of Biomedical Digital Research Objects
The findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR) guiding principles describe an urgent need to improve the infrastructure supporting scholarly data reuse. Several existing resources that already demonstrate various aspects of FAIR and associated driving technologies. Because there are different strategies for asserting FAIRness, efforts so far have been independent of one another and as such not comparable. While the biomedical research community at large mostly embraces the FAIR guidelines, there is still some confusion about the difference between being FAIR and being open access, what it means to be FAIR, and how the FAIR principles compare with other standards. As an example, the Mont Sinai Health System, an integrated health care system internationally acclaimed for its excellence in research, patient care, and education across a range of specialties, have seen its investigator, along with colleagues from another international consortium, developed a new toolbox to allow scientists to assess easily the digital objects they generate as a result of their research projects can be used by other research teams. The center’s goal is to upgrade the way data is managed in biomedical research-sharing and reusing data from these projects to maximally extract value.
