The ELIXIR-UK RDM Club has been awarded a BioFAIR Pathfinder grant for a project called The FAIR-in-action Bridge.

In summary, many UK research-performing organisations have FAIR data policies.  Many have guidance documents. What’s often missing is the middle layer: the practical, ready-to-use materials that let RDM professionals in the life sciences turn that guidance into something researchers actually engage with.

The FAIR-in-action Bridge is a BioFAIR Pathfinder project, led by coordinators of the ELIXIR-UK RDM Club, that sets out to fill this gap.

The project will produce two FAIR-in-action playbooks for life science RDM professionals:

1. How to approach FAIRification: practical activities and templates for FAIRifying data.
2. How to communicate and advocate FAIR: talking points, FAIR games and advocacy materials for different audiences

Both will be roughly 80% ready-to-use, aggregating open FAIR material in the public domain, with placeholders (20%) for your local context (eg institutional repositories and guidance). Both will be openly licensed and indexed. And both will be tested through one-day in-person rollouts at six UK RPOs.

We’re running three online Contentathons, and we’d love you to join the ones that fit. This first Contentathon is a scoping session. Drop-in. Help us define what each playbook needs to contain and what FAIR resources you use already in the life sciences.

There will also be two other Contentathons:

• 28th May – Contentathon #2 Playbook 1 content creation – How to approach FAIRification. Hands-on, structured in sections so you can join the bits relevant to you.
• 1st July – Contentathon #3 Playbook 2 content creation – How to communicate and advocate FAIR. Same format as 28 May.