Engaging the Scientific Community, Authors and Publishers in FAIR Taxonomic Data Liberation: An Overview of Training Resources at Plazi

Abstract

Since 2008, the not-for-profit organization Plazi*1, based in Switzerland, has been supporting and promoting the development of persistent and openly accessible digital taxonomic literature. To achieve this goal, Plazi makes use of in-house software tools for data mining and extraction from taxonomic publications, along with other partner institutions' tools and platforms, to liberate data on animals, plants, fungi, and more. In its mission to make taxonomic data FAIRly (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable*2) available to the community, Plazi has developed sets of training material and courses, which enable taxonomists, collection curators, students, technicians and others to participate in the process of taxonomic data liberation. The participation of several different members of the community is critcally important as data requires deep curation, often very specific to a particular field. Most recently, Plazi led a virtual 2-day workshop as part of the COST MOBILISE ACTION*3 (European Cooperation in Science and Technology - Mobilising Data, Policies and Experts in Scientific Collections) in Europe, along with two 4-day in-person workshops in Brazil and South Africa. Participants are issued certificates that entitle them to extract data on their own, thus multiplying the output of FAIR data using Plazi’s workflow. Plazi is also planning a new series of in-person courses for the scientific community in different regions of Brazil as well as courses for specific audiences interested in data reuse. These courses aim not only at training new certificate data liberators and data search platform users, but also at disseminating knowledge about the relevance of FAIR data, increasing the number of authors and publishers rethinking the future of scientific publications.