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Ontological Representation of FAIR Principles: A Blueprint for FAIRer Data Sources

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Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE 2023)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13901))

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Abstract

Guidelines to improve the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse of datasets, known as FAIR principles, were introduced in 2016 to enable machines to perform automatic actions on a variety of digital objects, including datasets. Since then, the principles have been widely adopted by data creators and users worldwide with the ‘FAIR’ acronym becoming a common part of the vocabulary of data scientists. However, there is still some controversy on how datasets should be interpreted since not all datasets that are claimed to be FAIR, necessarily follow the principles. In this research, we propose the OntoUML FAIR Principles Schema, as an ontological representation of FAIR principles for data practitioners. The work is based on OntoUML, an ontologically well-founded language for Ontology-driven Conceptual Modeling. OntoUML is a proxy for ontological analysis that has proven effective in supporting the explanation of complex domains. Our schema aims to disentangle the intricacies of the FAIR principles’ definition, by resolving aspects that are ambiguous, under-specified, recursively-specified, or implicit. The schema can be considered as a blueprint, or a template to follow when the FAIR classification strategy of a dataset must be designed. To demonstrate the usefulness of the schema, we present a practical example based on genomic data and discuss how the results provided by the OntoUML FAIR Principles Schema contribute to existing data guidelines.

A. Bernasconi and A. García S.—should be regarded as Joint First Authors.

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Acknowledgements

A.G.S. was supported by the Valencian Innovation Agency and Innovation through the OGMIOS project (INNEST/2021/57), the Generalitat Valenciana through the CoMoDiD project (CIPROM/2021/023), and the Spanish State Research Agency through the DELFOS (PDC2021-121243-I00,MICIN/AEI/10.13039/501 100011033) and SREC (PID2021-123824OB-I00) projects, and co-financed with ERDF and the European Union Next Generation EU/PRTR.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Anna Bernasconi

  2. Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain

    Alberto García Simon

  3. University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands

    Giancarlo Guizzardi & Luiz Olavo Bonino da Silva Santos

  4. Georgia State University, Atlanta, USA

    Veda C. Storey

  5. Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, The Netherlands

    Luiz Olavo Bonino da Silva Santos

Authors
  1. Anna Bernasconi
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  2. Alberto García Simon
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  3. Giancarlo Guizzardi
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  4. Luiz Olavo Bonino da Silva Santos
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  5. Veda C. Storey
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alberto García Simon .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. The University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Marta Indulska

  2. University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel

    Iris Reinhartz-Berger

  3. Universidad San Jorge, Zaragoza, Spain

    Carlos Cetina

  4. Universitat Politècnica de València, Valencia, Spain

    Oscar Pastor

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Bernasconi, A., Simon, A.G., Guizzardi, G., Santos, L.O.B.d.S., Storey, V.C. (2023). Ontological Representation of FAIR Principles: A Blueprint for FAIRer Data Sources. In: Indulska, M., Reinhartz-Berger, I., Cetina, C., Pastor, O. (eds) Advanced Information Systems Engineering. CAiSE 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13901. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34560-9_16

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-34560-9_16

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