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FAIR principles in research infrastructures: outcomes of the FNSO-funded I-FAIR IR project

The ‘Implementation of FAIR Principles in Research Infrastructures’ project, I-FAIR IR, ended last June. It was one of the twenty-two projects selected following the FNSO’s (National Fund for Open Science) first call for proposals in 2020, along with the ‘Open Access Development Support’ project, DADAO, managed by OpenEdition. I-FAIR IR was led by OpenEdition in partnership with the Métopes research infrastructure, the Digital Documentation Centre of the University of Caen’s Humanities Research Centre (MRSH), and the Technology and Resources Centre for ICTs (CERTIC) at the University of Caen. It met several key objectives related to persistent identifiers, licenses, and developing an application for structuring and transforming content, common to OpenEdition and Métopes.

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Following an internal audit (carried out between September 2019 and January 2020), several recommendations were made for rolling out FAIR principles across all OpenEdition platforms more fully.

The I-FAIR IR project emerged in response to OpenEdition’s duty to provide the journal and publisher sites hosted on its platforms with the means to comply with Plan S, and the fact that FAIR principles also needed to be applied to open science infrastructures. 

The project included three key goals to help OpenEdition take its application of FAIR principles to the next level:

  1. Assign persistent identifiers (PID) to all data
    • Ensure all data published on OpenEdition has a PID
    • Manage complex cases, such as deleted documents or pre-existing DOIs, to work more efficiently with other platforms and harvesters
    • Improve the visibility of published documents
    • Share the rolling out of this system with other scholarly communication stakeholders
  2. Roll out a licensing policy for all published content and communicate about it to the scientific
    community
    • Make user licenses clearer for OpenEdition content so that it is easier to use and disseminate
    • Draw up the terms and conditions for all content by the end of the project
    • Encourage publishers to transition to open licences
  3. Roll out an application common to OpenEdition and Métopes, for structuring and transforming
    content
    • Develop a web application
    • Work on generating a document model common to OpenEdition and Métopes
    • Provide free training to OpenEdition and Métopes jointly
    • Provide infrastructures and the community with an application for converting documents to and from various file formats, including the Métopes-OpenEdition TEI file format.

Several changes have therefore been made to each of OpenEdition’s four platforms.

Persistent identifiers

Each document published on an OpenEdition platform now has a Handle System persistent identifier. The principle of systematically assigning persistent identifiers tops the list of FAIR principles, because it is the basis for implementing all the other principles. A persistent identifier provides readers with access to a document even if its URL changes, and if the document is deleted, some information about it is still available.

DOI identifiers have now been rolled out for the Hypotheses and Calenda platforms (submitted to DataCite via the service provided by the Institute of Scientific and Technical Information, or INIST), and the system for submitting DOIs (CrossRef), which was already in place for OpenEdition Journals and OpenEdition Books, has been improved. All the documents published on Hypotheses and Calenda, and about 90% of those published on OpenEdition Journals and OpenEdition Books, now have a DOI. They have already been indexed in the Isodore search engine.
The work undertaken has led to a new version of OpenEdition’s OAI-PMH repository (called the beta version), which will be available for production in the autumn. Detailed documentation is available here: https://oai-openedition.readthedocs.io.

Licenses

Using CC0 for metadata that describe OpenEdition publications boosts the indexing of those publications. All Calenda, OpenEdition Books and OpenEdition Journals publications now provide clear information about the license applied. Licensing will be rolled out on Hypotheses by the end of the first half of 2025 at the latest, once the final development work is complete. OpenEdition has already presented its licensing policy – which offers a framework based on the interests of the user community and embraces the notion of open science – as well as the findings of a study it undertook, to the OpenEdition community. Tools have been created to help users choose the license that best applies to the content production context.

OpenEdition/Métopes web application

In partnership with the Métopes research infrastructure, the Digital Documentation Centre of the University of Caen’s Humanities Research Centre (MRSH), and the Technology and Resources Centre for ICTs (CERTIC) at the University of Caen, the former OTX tool used to convert files produced by publishers into OpenEdition TEI XML format has been replaced by an online converter: Circé.

The Circé application is open source. It can therefore be used to convert files into XML format and is compatible with several schemas commonly used for scholarly publications: TEI XML and JATS XML. This has strengthened international collaboration between Métopes and the Public Knowledge Project on TEI and JATS formats. This web application designed for OpenEdition and Métopes users is linked to the Fair Environment for Structured Editing project, FAIREST, led by Métopes. The goal of the project was to consolidate the data schema integrated into the structured digital publishing tools offered by Métopes, and encourage compliance with international standards on the encoding, reuse and sustainability of published content.

I-FAIR IR in a nutshell

The I-FAIR IR project helped strengthen and expand OpenEdition’s national and international partnerships. The FAIRification of OpenEdition’s data has improved its interoperability with direct partners and boosted its national and international presence. The licensing policy of OpenEdition Books and OpenEdition Journals complies with the principles set out in Plan S by cOAlition S. Publishers on those platforms can now assign a license to books, chapters, journal issues or articles that complies with those principles.

OpenEdition’s activities already tie in closely with those of two key players on the French Humanities and Social Sciences research infrastructure scene: Métopes and Huma-Num. By sharing tools and services common to Métopes and OpenEdition, the I-FAIR IR project gave rise to joint solutions, as well as harmonized data structuring formats. The fact that Métopes and OpenEdition’s TEI schemas are now aligned makes it easier to inform and assist the users we have in common.  The I-FAIR IR project was therefore key to building a FAIR ecosystem for scholarly communication across the Humanities and Social Sciences, in France and beyond. These tools and solutions can now be used by other national and international stakeholders.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
OpenEdition team (July 19, 2024). FAIR principles in research infrastructures: outcomes of the FNSO-funded I-FAIR IR project. Open Electronic Publishing. Retrieved February 19, 2025 from https://doi.org/10.58079/12esg


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