D6.1 Overview of needs for competence centres

The overall objective of FAIRsFAIR is to accelerate the realization of the goals of the EOSC by opening up and sharing all knowledge, expertise, guidelines, implementations, new trajectories, courses and education on FAIR matters. To support this, FAIRsFAIR is tasked to set up a single FAIR Data Stewardship Competence Centre which this report defines as a shared hub of expertise in implementing FAIR data stewardship principles, offering leadership, coordination and cataloging services to connect relevant people, guidance, learning resources and curricula in different thematic areas.

Requirements for competence centres in general and a core competence centre for FAIR data stewardship in general were identified by interviewing other members of the FAIRsFAIR project to understand their expectations for a core competence centre as well as the resources they will contribute to the knowledge base. Furthermore, we carried out a broad characterisation of current competence centres enriched with case studies of good examples for certain aspects of a competence centre. We created user stories for how stakeholders might interact with the competence centres and refined them through an open consultation answered by 106 people, interviews with EOSC clusters, and feedback gathered in workshops at the Open Science Fair 2019.

Based on the description of work and our research, we have identified the following priorities for competence centres in general and the FAIRsFAIR core Competence Centre in particular:

Advisory

• Create a catalogue of resources to support FAIR data stewardship

• Provide a help desk to support FAIR data stewardship

• Provide a networking tool to support FAIR data stewardship

Harmonisation

• Apply emerging standards to describe learning resources in FAIR data stewardship 

• Encourage economy of scale through deploying the same tools and certifying services addressing FAIR data needs

Dissemination

• Develop training and guidance materials on FAIR data stewardship topics currently not covered

• Develop curation policies for the content aggregated and developed by the FAIRsFAIR Data Stewardship Competence Centre

• Deliver training on core competencies for FAIR data stewardship