BestPractices
Why Best Practices?
When MaRDI was launched, little was known in the mathematical community about FAIR research data. To counteract this, it is vital to have well-maintained lighthouse projects. These showcase usefulness of research-data management, infrastructure services, and of having FAIR data objects all along the life cycle. Because they are anchored in the community and immediately useful in research, the average mathematician can directly see advantages of such well-curated research data and follow by example in their own work.
What Best Practices?
One example of FAIR mathematics is the project small phylogenetic trees: an early 2000's mathematical library transformed into a modern website, a software package, and a best practice report. The MaRDI HelpDesk team together with maintainers of the original library, researchers actively using the content, and in discussion with data stewards and information specialists, took the original database and made it FAIR. In particular, the team successfully tackled three interlinked work packages. For one, they set up a modern website displaying the content of the library in a straightforward, user friendly fashion, available at algebraicphylogenetics.org. Two, they heavily focused on providing thorough computational proof for every result displayed. To achieve this, the website was supplemented by the AlgebraicPhylogenetics.jl software. The code is part of the AlgebraicStatistics.jl package in the OSCAR project, written in Julia. OSCAR provides serialization. Three, the team wrote an extended project report, including before-and-after analysis of FAIRness and a research-data management plan. This report discusses lessons learned and provides guidelines for other, similar projects to FAIR their own data.
Another example is the mathematical research-data repository MathRepo, available at mathrepo.org. Available for contribution for researchers formerly and presently at the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig and their coauthors, MathRepo functions as a prototype of a versatile repository with educational blog-style content pages. This setup allows for a lot of flexibility in presenting material supplementary to articles, providing minimal working examples of code, hosting three-dimensional visualisations of mathematical objects, and documenting workshop results. FAIRness of the content is ensured by a team of maintainers and has recently been discussed in an article in the Computer Algebra Rundbrief.
How to Best Practice
MaRDI offers support and consultancy for making your own mathematics FAIR. We also advertise FAIR prjects. You may simply contact the HelpDesk.
