Organizing biological and biomedical data for sharing and reuse – the ambition of open research data – is at the core of SIB’s activities. From coordinating data in pan-European health projects according to the FAIR principles, to teaching life scientists how to build their Data Management Plan, discover a selection of our projects and dedicated expertise, including data stewardship.
Most researchers would like to increase their impact by making their data FAIR, but often lack the time, skills, and human or technical resources to achieve this. This is where Data stewards come in. Data stewards are multidisciplinary experts who use skills in IT, coordination, data management, and curation to ensure scientists are able to make their data accessible and reusable. They support researchers within and across different fields and institutions. Their national coordination will be a key objective of the SwissBioData ecosystem.
Over the years, SIB has led and contributed to a range of national and international work towards Open Research Data. Examples include:
- SIB acts as Data Coordination Centre in numerous international public-private partnerships as part of the Innovative Health Initiative (IHI, previously IMI), harmonizing data and implementing FAIR principles across projects tackling cancer, diabetes and obesity;
- It contributed to the development of the ELIXIR RDMkit, an online guide containing good data management practices applicable to research projects throughout the data lifecycle, and the FAIR cookbook to bring these practices into reality;
- It is co-leading two work packages as part of the ELIXIR-CONVERGE project, whose aim is to help standardize life science data management across Europe: one around training and capacity building and one around SARS-CoV-2 genomic data sharing;
- SIB teams regularly teach and assist life scientists with their Data Management Plan, and have developed a canvas generator together with the Swiss Data Life-Cycle Management" (DLCM) project;
- Open Science database and software tools are aligned with best practices for data integration and FAIR principles, to ensure maximum impact for researchers using them (article in Briefings in Bioinformatics);
SIB has successfully established the BioMedIT network (see infographics) and the Swiss Personalized Health Network (SPHN) as FAIR, sustainable national infrastructure enabling responsible sharing of health data for research purposes.
