Making Biomedical Research Software FAIR: Actionable Step-by-step Guidelines with a User-support Tool

Overview

Journal Sci Data

Specialty Science

Date 2023 Aug 23

PMID 37612312

Authors

Bhavesh Patel

Sanjay Soundarajan

Herve Menager

Zicheng Hu

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) guiding principles tailored for research software have been proposed by the FAIR for Research Software (FAIR4RS) Working Group. They provide a foundation for optimizing the reuse of research software. The FAIR4RS principles are, however, aspirational and do not provide practical instructions to the researchers. To fill this gap, we propose in this work the first actionable step-by-step guidelines for biomedical researchers to make their research software compliant with the FAIR4RS principles. We designate them as the FAIR Biomedical Research Software (FAIR-BioRS) guidelines. Our process for developing these guidelines, presented here, is based on an in-depth study of the FAIR4RS principles and a thorough review of current practices in the field. To support researchers, we have also developed a workflow that streamlines the process of implementing these guidelines. This workflow is incorporated in FAIRshare, a free and open-source software application aimed at simplifying the curation and sharing of FAIR biomedical data and software through user-friendly interfaces and automation. Details about this tool are also presented.

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