Speaker
Description
In the last times, it became increasingly important to make data and also samples FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). Many Research Support Programs expect or encourage funded projects to make their results and data openly accessible. While open publications and data are commonly known, a more recent aspect are open samples. Physical samples or specimen are often at the beginning of the “research chain” as they are the source of much of the data described in scientific literature. The IGSN (International Generic Sample Number) is a globally unique and persistent identifier (PID) for samples and collections with a search function in the internet. IGSNs allow data and publications to be linked directly to the samples from which they are derived, closing the last gap in the complete provenance of research results. Furthermore, both, samples and data, need sufficient and, at best, standardised metadata so that users can easily find and use the data.
In this talk, I will give some insights into open data – what are open data, how can I and why should I make my data open? Furthermore. I will present the FAIR WISH project (FAIR Workflows to establish IGSN for Samples in the Helmholtz Association), which aims to create user-friendly workflows to register various kinds of samples with an IGSN in the Earth and Environmental Sciences. In this project, we created a user-friendly, easy-to-use batch registration template in MS Excel, with few mandatory and many optional variables to describe a sample, the sampling activity, location and so on. Users can easily create their Excel-template, including only the variables needed to describe a sample. In a first step, we already used the template to register water and soil samples from past expeditions and now want to extent it to and test it with further sample types.
