FAIR in Action conference concludes in Göttingen
Göttingen, 2 Oct 2025
The two‑day conference “FAIR in Action – Integrating Open Source RDM‑Tools Effectively” wrapped up on Thursday with a concise program and 40 participants from academia and research infrastructure. This event for research data stewards, scientists and developers was organized by IndiScale as a satellite event to the annual FDM@Campus conference.
Day 1: From ELNs to Full-Workflow Solutions
The conference started on October 1st with developers showcasing open source electronic lab notebooks (ELNs) that extend beyond just the laboratory. RSpace and eLabFTW demonstrated how their platforms can support the entire research workflow, not only data capture. The day also featured two in‑depth talks on FAIR Digital Objects (FDOs), highlighting their potential to make the internet truly machine‑actionable.
Four breakout sessions followed, with over an hour of intense discussion and exchange of expectations and experiences:
- How AI can assist research data management (RDM)
- Challenges of integrating heterogeneous tools
- Building competencies for central services in decentralized research environments
- Positive examples of digitalisation in practice
The breakout session concluded to make way for a presentation on data integration with LinkAhead, presented by Leibniz ZMT and BASS teams. The evening ended with a LinkAhead community gathering, while other participants went to a self-organised bar‑hopping in downtown Göttingen.
Day 2: Tools for Software and Data Management
On the second day, FAIR in Action continued with MPDL’s (Max Planck Digital Library) presentation of MAUS (Machine‑AUtomated Support for software management plans), a generator for research‑software management plans analogous to data management plan tools. IndiScale then demonstrated LinkAhead‘s agile data‑management capabilities, showing three integration pathways: via .eln file export from eLabFTW, direct API access to eLabFTW via the LinkAhead crawler, and file‑system‑level data integration.
A wrap‑up of the breakout session results from day 1 provided concrete take‑aways for participants. After lunch, RWTH presented Coscine‘s integration with eLabFTW, and Liberbyte discussed global RDM strategies using bytEM, a solution that repurposes “too much data” into usable assets via a Matrix‑ chat based infrastructure.
The conference highlighted practical, open source approaches to FAIR‑compliant research data management and underscored the growing collaboration between tool developers, research institutions, and infrastructure providers.
Nina Rosnerski, main organizer of the conference, concludes:
FAIR in Action has shown that open source tools provide the basis for robust, end‑to‑end research data workflows that truly serve the needs of scientists and data stewards. The enthusiasm and concrete ideas that emerged over these two days prove that the community wants more than isolated solutions: interoperable, FAIR‑by‑design ecosystems are the future. We look forward to fostering this exchange of experts over the next years.