PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP FORMS LEIDEN INSTITUTE FOR FAIR AND EQUITABLE SCIENCE (LIFES) TO ADDRESS THE CHALLENGES OF GLOBAL DATA REUSE

Public-Private Partnership forms Leiden Institute for FAIR and Equitable Science (LIFES) to address the challenges of global data reuse.

LIFES will facilitate an ecosystem to enable FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data generation, privacy preserving data stewardship, and equitable information reuse.

Today, an international public-private partnership of eleven forward-thinking academic and private organisations announces its joint effort to establish the Leiden Institute for FAIR and Equitable Science (LIFES). The founding partners of LIFES are the GO FAIR Foundation, CCC (Copyright Clearance Center), FAIRscholar, HINQ, Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), Leiden University / Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR), Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Roche Nederland B.V., Sage, TNO and the University of Twente (UT).

LIFES will address the challenges of global data reuse by building a wide and diverse network of public and private members that want to incorporate the principles of FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) and equitable data reuse. It will coordinate a strong, coherent FAIR-compliant application and services offering for training, data stewardship, analytics/machine learning and infrastructure. LIFES will broker access to these services, stimulate collaborations to fill technological and methodological gaps, and take the lead in securing public and private funding for developing strategic capabilities.

“Currently, data reuse is severely hampered by inadequate discoverability, limited accessibility, and poor interoperability between data sets. Within LIFES, we are setting a new standard for how data and information should be formatted, visited, and reused for the greater good.” Says Prof. Barend Mons, founding director of LIFES, and leading the launch phase. “We will enable a step-change to advanced analytics through smart, visiting algorithms fostering trusted and machine-augmented science. In doing so, LIFES not only contributes to the advancement of scientific research and innovation but also ensures that the benefits of these developments are shared equitably across the global community”.

The mission of LIFES is to facilitate an ecosystem where FAIR data generation, privacy preserving data stewardship, and equitable reuse of information are the norm. A radically distributed approach, where data is visited and queried at the source, will be an essential characteristic of this ecosystem. LIFES will serve as a catalyst for removing unnecessary barriers to equitable data visiting for legitimate research questions that meet legal, ethical, and consent requirements.

“The GO FAIR Foundation has always been at the forefront of FAIR, working closely with the community to interpret the FAIR principles, guide implementation choices, develop qualification criteria and build capacity through our fellows & training program,” says Bert Meerman, Director at the GO FAIR Foundation. “I am excited that through the unique public-private partnership of LIFES, we can now take a decisive step towards establishing FAIR and equitable reuse at a global scale”.

LIFES will encourage and facilitate the creation of independent sibling institutes equally committed to the core principles of FAIR, privacy preserving, and equitable reuse. By laying the foundations for a FAIR and equitable data ecosystem that can be replicated throughout the world, LIFES is responding to the immediate needs of the global research community and also supporting the scale up to the future demands of a world increasingly reliant on data-driven decision-making. This initiative marks a significant step forward in fulfilling the potential of big data to solve complex problems, drive innovation, and promote a more inclusive and sustainable future.

The Leiden Institute for FAIR and Equitable Science (LIFES) is an initiative of an international public-private partnership of eleven academic and private founding partners: the GO FAIR Foundation, CCC (Copyright Clearance Center), FAIRscholar, HINQ, Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), Leiden University / Leiden Academic Centre for Drug Research (LACDR), Naturalis Biodiversity Center, Roche Nederland B.V., Sage, TNO and the University of Twente (UT).

LIFES will address the challenges of global data reuse by facilitating an ecosystem where FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data generation, privacy preserving data stewardship, and equitable reuse of information are the norm. It will coordinate a strong, coherent FAIR-compliant application and services offering for training, data stewardship, analytics/machine learning and infrastructure. LIFES will broker access to these services, stimulate collaborations to fill technological and methodological gaps and take the lead in securing public and private funding for developing strategic capabilities.

LIFES will encourage and facilitate the creation of independent sibling institutes equally committed to the core principles of FAIR, privacy preserving, and equitable reuse. In this manner, LIFES is responding to the immediate needs of the global research community and also supporting the scale up to the future demands of a world increasingly reliant on data-driven decision-making.

The GO FAIR Foundation provides guidance on interpretation and implementation choices for making data universally Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable (FAIR) through:

– Offering explicit, expert interpretation of each of the FAIR Guiding Principles, tailored to specific expert communities.
– Guiding implementation choices through FAIR specifications.
– Developing objective criteria as the foundation for schema development and qualification.
– Building capacity through our fellows programme, workshops and training.
– Actively coordinating with international organisations dealing with data issues.