FAIR co creation or FAIR herding? eNanoMapper database, tools and workflows

Background & Aims: eNanoMapper is an open source platform for chemical substance data management which offers a FAIR-aligned Nanosafety Data Interface (https://search.data.enanomapper.net) across physicochemical, bio–nano interaction, human toxicity, omics, ecotoxicological and exposure data (10.1038/s41565-021-00911-6.). The eNanoMapper FAIRification workflow (10.3390/nano10101908) enabled accumulation of the largest searchable compilation of nanoEHS (Nano Environment, Health and Safety) data in Europe from multiple completed and ongoing EU-funded projects. The data is also machine readable by means of REST API supporting multiple serialization formats and standard authentication protocols.

Despite the wide agreement FAIR guiding principles are helping consistent curation and data reuse, the current adoption mostly addresses findability and accessibility, and less the interoperability and “machine actionability”, which is the core reason of introducing FAIR by the data professionals (10.1162/dint_a_00084).  In most domains, researchers are reluctant to change existing data gathering practices. For this reason the FAIR advocates argue a cultural change is necessary and/or transfer the data to “data shepherds” or “data stewards”.

Methods: Instead of imposing “structured” data entry formats, which are usually easy to parse, but are not native to the daily experience of wet lab researchers, we opted to create tools to facilitate the conversion of familiar spreadsheets into machine readable format, complying with a pre-defined semantic model.  Community co-creation and harmonization of the data entry content and layout for different types of experimental techniques is essential in this process.

Results & Discussion. The eNanoMapper Template Wizard is currently consisting of a growing set of 50 data entry templates for a variety of physicochemical, in-vitro, exposure and release experiments and omics metadata. The filled-in data template can be uploaded to an online template validator tool, in order to verify its compliance, completeness and consistency, visualize the data and convert into semantic formats. The Template Wizard is a community driven approach towards harmonization of the template contents and layout. Data producers do not require prior expertise or knowledge of the IT infrastructure in order to create FAIR data resources and collaboratively work on metadata and ontology annotation. With easy to use and familiar tools for data entry and retrieval, we aim to take note of and adapt to the user perspective and empower the scientists to handle their own data in a FAIR way.