Leiden Declaration on FAIR Digital Objects

FDO2022 will conclude with the formal signing and publication of the ‘Leiden Declaration on FAIR Digital Objects’, which text you can see below. While the signing will take place at the end of the conference, in Leiden, we would like to invite you to add your name to the movement initiated by FDO2022 by signing the declaration online. It is an opportunity for all of us working in research, technology, policy and beyond to support an unprecedented effort to further develop FAIR digital objects, open standards and protocols, and increased reliability and trustworthiness of data. In short, a new environment that works as a truly meaningful data space. 

You can sign the declaration using the button at the end of this page. Join us!

FDO 2022 29072

Leiden Declaration on FAIR Digital Objects


"Acknowledging that, the innovations brought by the current Internet have great benefits for society, but also come with inherent challenges such as the nearly uncontrolled spread of misinformation and violations of privacy, we affirm that:"

  • There is an imperative to harness the benefits and mitigate the unwanted side effects of the Internet and the Web.
  • Once machines enter the equation as ‘users’ of the internet and increasingly independently from human intervention, the benefits as well as the challenges will be further aggravated.
  • The development of combined use of data and services by humans and machines (‘Hybrid Intelligence’) and by increasingly powerful machine learning algorithms operating independently (‘Artificial Intelligence’) requires urgent action and decision making regarding the proper and controllable reuse of data, and information, with built-in ‘privacy by design’.
  • Transparency, scrutiny and trust in data and the associated processing (more and more by machines) is essential if we are to avoid a future web that will be increasingly polluted with unreliable information and dominated by the use of algorithms without clear, explicit and comprehensible origins and operations. 
  • Current society is increasingly data-driven and faces unprecedented global challenges, reflected for instance in the SDGs [https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/]
  • In order to benefit society and our planet in general, access to the underlying data and infrastructure should be global in nature, as open as possible and as equitable as possible.
  • This implies optimal interoperability of data and the associated infrastructure across domain, geographical and cultural borders.


In response to these challenges, we contend that:

  • The future of research and innovation will be dependent on effective machine-assisted methods.  
  • For machines to assist people in the research and innovation process we need iterative human-machine interaction, here referred to as ‘Hybrid Intelligence’.
  • For machines to optimally serve this process, data and the accompanying software and infrastructure should enable machines to independently Find, Access, (Inter-)operate on, and Reuse (and repurpose) data and the accompanying workflows and services. 
  • Data formats should enable transfer over the internet as FAIR, machine-interpretable and self-explanatory units of information/knowledge (the FAIR digital object concept).  
  • Data integrity should be protected to avoid data corruption and context/provenance degradation.
  • For humans to retain trust and endorse the benefits of machine assistance, all machine actions should be properly logged, and explainable at request, allowing full transparency and traceability (provenance). 
  • Adequate infrastructures are essential in reaching the full potential of available data and services. 
  • FAIR digital objects on the Internet, including the Web, should ideally be actionable by machines alleviating unnecessary burden of human intervention.
  • The use of the desired commonly usable infrastructure, provisionally called the web of FAIR data and services, therefore needs to be built around machine actionable units of information. 
  • Data and associated services (protocols, software, algorithms) should be as open as possible, and only as restricted as necessary.
  • FAIR digital objects should not only be unambiguously identified, but also convey to the consumer their accessibility conditions.
  • FAIR digital objects can contribute to scalable, equitable and transparent access to information and knowledge. 
  • Standards facilitating global implementation of FAIR digital objects should be developed as open and publicly accessible resources.


Therefore, we commit to:

  • Support the FAIR guiding principles to be applied (ultimately) to each digital object in a web of FAIR data and services;  
  • Support open standards and protocols;
  • Support data and services to be as open as possible, and only as restricted as necessary;
  • Support distributed solutions where useful to achieve robustness and scalability, but recognise the need for centralised approaches where necessary;
    • Support the restriction of standards and protocols to the absolute minimum;
    • Support freedom to operate wherever possible;
    • Help to avoid monopolies and provider lock-in wherever possible.

We acknowledge the FAIR digital object concept is a set of behaviours and properties as described above and should serve as the basis for the FAIR publication of digital entities, encouraging the community to design and implement protocols and specifications that enable these FAIR features, irrespective of the technology used.

Signatory data

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Signatories of the Leiden Declaration on FAIR Digital Objects

(Please, note that it might take a few minutes before you see your name added to the signatories list).

Name
Organisation
Barend Mons
LUMC, LACDR, CODATA, GO FAIR
Franciska de Jong
CLARIN ERIC
Erik Schultes
GO FAIR Foundation
Thomas Hankemeier
Leiden University/Leiden Acaedemic Centre for Drug Research
Ben Schaap
Wageningen University and Research
Khachatur Julfakyan
Scimagine
Erik van Mulligen
Erasmus University Medical Center
Elena Giglia
University of Turin / OPERAS Research Infrastructure
Susanne Hollmann
SB Science Management UG
Marco Roos
Leiden University Medical Center
BERT MEERMAN
GO FAIR Foundation
Ronit Purian
Tel Aviv University, CODATA, HUJI
Babette Regierer
SB Science Management UG
Edwin van Huis
Naturalis Biodiversity Center
Audrey Masizana
University of Botswana
Peter Wittenburg
FDO Forum
Renger Jellema
Individual signatory
Klaas Wierenga
GÉANT
Claus Weiland
Senckenberg, DiSSCo, NFDI4Earth
Ulrich Schwardmann
GWDG
Rainer Stotzka
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
JC Burgelman
Free University of Brussels//Frontiers Policy Labs
Koenraad De Smedt
University of Bergen / CLARINO
Francis P. Crawley
Good Clinical Practice Alliance - Europe (GCPA)
Maggie Hellström
Lund University
Frits Grotenhuis
Topsector ICT
Christophe Blanchi
DONA Foundation
Peter Verkoulen
Gaia-X hub The Netherlands
Simon Hodson
CODATA, the Committee on Data of the International Science Council
Milan Ojsteršek
University of Maribor
Sharif Islam
Naturalis Biodiversity Center
Ruben Kok
DTL & Health-RI
Rob Hooft
Dutch Techcentre for Life sciences
Tomasz Miksa
TU Wien & SBA Research
Jildau Bouwman
TNO
Rolf Krahl
Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie
Andre Boorsma
TNO
Peter Mutschke
GESIS – Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
Tibor Kálmán
GWDG
Hans-Günther Döbereiner
Universität Bremen
Donat Agosti
Plazi
Anna Niehues
Radboud University Medical Center
Mark Musen
Stanford University
Karsten Peters-von Gehlen
German Climate Computing Center (DKRZ)
Dimitris Koureas
Distributed System of Scientific Collections - DiSSCo RI
Lyubomir Penev
Pensoft Publishers Ltd
Philipp Koellinger
DeSci Labs
Paolo Budroni
TI Wien
Annika Jacobsen
Leiden University Medical Center
Abraham Nieva de la Hidalga
Cardiff University, School of Chemistry and UK Catalysis Hub
Sven Bingert
GWDG
Barbara Magagna
GO FAIR Foundation
Mario Valle
Swiss National Supercomputing Centre
Anders Conrad
DeiC
Romain David
European Research Infrastructure on Highly Pathogenic Agents
Christopher Hill
DeSci Foundation
Adamantios Koumpis
Institute for Biomedical Informatics
Ilaria Rosati
National Research Council of Italy/ LifeWatch ERIC
Jan Hazelzet
Hazelzetdotcom
Michel Dumontier
Maastricht University
Elena Battaner Moro
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid, Spain)
Hans Lienhop
GWDG
Debora Drucker
Embrapa
Erik Flikkenschild
Go FAIR Foundation
Marlon Domingus
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Tobias Kuhn
Knowledge Pixels / VU Amsterdam
Robert Hanisch
NIST
Sina Iman
DeSci Labs
Alex Henderson
University of Manchester & The International Society for Clinical Spectroscopy
Luiz Olavo Bonino da Silva Santos
University of Twente, LUMC
Giancarlo Guizzardi
University of Twente, The Netherlands
Christine Kirkpatrick
San Diego Supercomputer Center, GO FAIR US
Claudia Martens
DKRZ
Yuri Demchenko
University Of Amsterdam, Informatics Institute
Giancarlo Guizzardi
University of Twente, the Netherlands
Barbara Sanchez
FAIR Office Austria
Mark Wharton
Iotic Labs Limited
Laszlo Kovacs
SZTAKI - Institute for Computer Science and Control
Agnieszka Wegrzyn
Leiden University / EV Biotech
Stian Soiland-Reyes
The University of Manchester
Jochen Knaus
Medical Center, University of Freiburg
Richard Agyemang
TNO
Fred Van de Brug
TNO
Jesse Prevoo
TNO
Inald Lagendijk
AiNed AI Public-Private Innovation Program
valentina bonora
University of Florence
Kristina Hettne
Leiden University Libraries
Limor Peer
Yale University
Christophe Blanchi
DONA Foundation
Jutta Buschbom
Statistical Genetics
Alessandro Spinuso
KNMI
Mark Wilkinson
Centre for Plant Biotechnology and Genomics UPM/INIA
Chelsea Crane
Individual signatory
Brett Olivier
VU Amsterdam
Parul Tewatia
Data centre, Scilifelab
Daina Bouquin
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
Robert Quick
Pervasive Technology Institute - Indiana University
Daniel Chivvis
Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
Domenica dibenedetto
UM
Annalisa Minelli
Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research (ISPRA)
Robert Pergl
Czech Technical University in Prague
Beth Plale
Indiana University Pervasive Technology Institute
Donny Winston
Polyneme LLC, New York, NY, USA
Ignasi Labastida
Universitat de Barcelona
Anne Fouilloux
Individual signatory
Gabriëlle Speijer
CatalyzIT & HagaTeaching Hospital
Juan Facundo Araujo
Archivo Bunge & Born
Nicolas Blumenröhr
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
Hana Pergl
CODATA, GO FAIR Foundation
Amirpasha Mozaffari
forschungszentrum jülich
Peter van Heusden
South African National Bioinformatics Institute, University of the Western Cape
Silvio Peroni
University of Bologna
Alessa Gambardella
Leiden University
Daniel Kapitan
TU Eindhoven
Geraldino Bastos
Unb
Andrea Schrader
Individual signatory
Nicolaie Constantinescu
Kosson
Rory Macneil
Research Space
Jean Iaquinta
Universitetet i Oslo
Mijke de Ru
Augustus parochie Oegstgeest
Ting Liu
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Carole Goble
The University of Manchester, UK
Menzo Windhouwer
KNAW HuC DI/CLARIN ERIC
George Strawn
Individual signatory
Eelke van der Horst
The Hyve
Sam Leeflang
Naturalis Biodiversity Center, DiSSCo
Elisa Cirillo
The Hyve
Anne Sofie Fink
DeiC
TItus Kretzschmar
Naturalis Biodiversity Center
Gabriel Preuß
Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie
András Micsik
SZTAKI
Harry van Haaften
The Hyve
Hartmut Schultze
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
David Butcher
National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
Claudia Biniossek
TIB – Leibniz-Informationszentrum Technik und Naturwissenschaften
Dirk Betz
TIB – Leibniz-Informationszentrum Technik und Naturwissenschaften
Katy Wolstencroft
Leiden Institute of Advanced Computer Science
Joaquim Santos
University of Coimbra (Herbarium)
Sara El-Gebali
FAIRPoints
Robin Mischa van Stokkum
TNO
Alina Freire-Fierro
Universidad Regional Amazonica Ikiam
Santiago Moreno-Vázquez
ETSIAAB-UPM
Leyla Jael Castro
ZB MED
Ana Lucia de Kruif - Arce
Naturalis, ARISE project
Zachary Trautt
NIST
Luana Sales
IBICT
Luis Fernando Sayão
IBICT / CNEN
Luís Gomes
Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa (FCUL)
Florian Spreckelsen
IndiScale GmbH
Zeyd Boukhers
Individual signatory
Daniel Mietchen
Ronin Institute of Independent Scholarship
Margreet Bloemers
Individual signatory
Jakub Jirka
Codevence Solutions
Marek Suchánek
Data Stewardship Wizard / CTU in Prague
Laura Rezende
Federal University of Goias
Anne-Caroline Deletoille
Institut Pasteur
Martin Thomas Horsch
Norwegian University of Life Sciences
Richard Dennis
University of Copenhagen
Eugenio Torres Flawia
Fundación Bunge y Born
Henrik tom Wörden
IndiScale GmbH
Martin Oliver
Fundación Williams
Zoran Bekić
SRCE - University Computing Center University of Zagreb