GO-Plan: A goal-oriented method for FAIRification planning

• Published in: Information services & use Vol. 45; no. 1-2; pp. 100 - 124
• Main Authors: Bernabé, César, Valle, Isadora, Prince Sales, Tiago, Schultes, Erik, van Ulzen, Niek, Silva Souza, Vítor E, Jacobsen, Annika, Bonino da Silva Santos, Luiz Olavo, Mons, Barend, Roos, Marco
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01.05.2025
• Subjects: FAIRification planning; FAIR principles; FAIRification; FAIRification objectives; goal-modelling
• DOI: 10.1177/18758789251324008
• ISSN: 0167-5265

The FAIR principles provide guidance on improving the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability of digital resources. Since the publication of the principles, several workflows have been proposed to support the process of making data FAIR (FAIRification). However, to respect the uniqueness of different communities, both the principles and the available workflows have been deliberately designed to remain agnostic in terms of standards, tools, and implementation choices. Consequently, FAIRification needs to be properly planned, and implementation details must be discussed with stakeholders and aligned with FAIRification objectives. To support this need, this paper describes GO-Plan, a method for identifying and refining FAIRification objectives. Leveraging on best practices from requirements and ontology engineering, the method aims at incrementally elaborating the most obvious aspects of the domain (e.g. the initial set of elements to be collected) into complex and comprehensive objectives. The definition of clear objectives enables stakeholders to communicate effectively and make informed implementation decisions, such as defining achievement criteria for distinct principles and identifying relevant metadata to be collected. GO-Plan has been validated in multiple discussion sessions with experts on FAIR, in an application to a real use case and in two hands-on tutorials with end-users.