FAIR Data for the ‘Long Tail of Science’

Data collected from natural populations in the fields of ecology and evolution are essential to our understanding of living systems, and to our capacity to address global challenges, such as climate change. Yet, much needed data synthesis across research groups is challenging, because groups are not well connected, and they use different methods to collect and manage their data (so called ‘long-tail of scientific data). Thus transition to Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR) data is much needed to facilitate synergy between groups and to facilitate increased knowledge potential based on the collected data

The aim of this workshop is to 1) make a substantial step toward making the long tail of science FAIR and develop roadmaps to achieve synergy between ecological databases, specifically those that collect data on birds; 2) create an interdisciplinary research community that uses the combined power of the data hosted at different participating databases.

The workshop brings together three main groups: 1) scientific experts within the fields of ecology and evolution; 2) database managers working on a range of ecological databases; and 3) professionals working with the e-infrastructures and FAIR data. By bringing experts together, we will achieve concrete steps towards the synergy between ecological databases that integrate data on birds as well as biodiversity data (SPI-Birds, eBird, EURING, MoveBank, GBIF): standards, FAIR data, and communication protocols, Further, we will develop a roadmap for future development and implementation of these, and if we launch a research community that will work towards implementing these.