“ETH Zurich is proud to announce the launch of the ETH FAIR Coalition, an institution-wide initiative,” says Annette Oxenius, Vice-President for Research, who is leading this Coalition together with Ueli Weidmann, Vice-President for Infrastructure and Sustainability. “This initiative underscores ETH Zurich’s dedication to open science and collaborative research practices, ensuring that data and other digital assets generated within the institution meet the highest standards of accessibility and reuse,” she emphasised.
Meanwhile, Weidmann remarks: “The Coalition aims to implement the FAIR principles –Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability – across all digital research assets, including research data, metadata, scientific code, electronic notes and digital images.”
A new charter sets out core values and principles
Both members of the Executive Board seek to foster broad engagement in FAIR-related activities, aiming to establish a strong FAIR community at ETH Zurich. To this end, and as announced today at the Town Hall meeting in the New Year, ETH Zurich has established a Charter that defines a shared commitment to FAIR principles. “All ETH Zurich researchers and staff members are invited to signtheCoalition’sCharter as individual signatories,” says Annete Oxenius.
The development of the FAIR Coalition will follow an iterative process. After the initial call for individual signatures, research units (including professorships, technology platforms, centres, institutes) will be invited to join the coalition in spring. This next phase will focus on concrete steps towards implementing the FAIR principles across ETH Zurich.
Goals of the ETH FAIR Coalition
The overarching goal is ETH-wide adoption of the FAIR Principles for digital research assets. The Coalition seeks to achieve this by:
“To support these efforts, ETH Zurich is introducing the FAIR Competence Funding, designed to promote existing RDM expertise in the research units and make it accessible to a wider audience of researchers within ETH,” Oxenius announces.