Moving Towards FAIR Mappings: From Technical Recommendations to Common Practices

• March 31, 2025

FAIR-IMPACT continues its efforts to enhance data interoperability by refining strategies for making mappings and crosswalks FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). As part of this initiative, the final workshop in the series will take place on 7 May 2025, focusing on the latest version of the practical mapping framework and addressing key challenges such as sustainability and governance.

The Importance of FAIR Mappings

Semantic artefacts—such as ontologies, terminologies, vocabularies, and metadata schemas—play a crucial role in enabling data interoperability. However, as the number and diversity of these artefacts grow, creating connections between them becomes both necessary and complex. Mappings (or crosswalks) serve as a solution by linking similar concepts across different artefacts, ensuring smoother integration and reuse of data.

FAIR-IMPACT has been leading a series of workshops to explore how mappings can be standardized, sustained, and made FAIR-compliant, ensuring they become integral components of the research data ecosystem.

Workshop Series Overview

The journey towards FAIR mappings has included three previous workshops:

1. Why Mappings Matter and How to Make Them FAIR?
   • Introduced the need for FAIR mappings and best practices.
2. Documenting Mapping Community Practices
   • Examined methodologies for creating, curating, and maintaining mappings.
3. Developing a Mapping Process Framework
   • Established a five-phase framework for creating and sustaining FAIR mappings.

Final Workshop: Addressing Sustainability and Governance

The fourth and final workshop will review community feedback on the initial framework, explore governance challenges, and refine the FAIR Mapping recommendations. Discussions will also focus on how mappings can be maintained for long-term accessibility and reuse.

Workshop Details

• 📅 Date: Wednesday, 7 May 2025
• ⏰ Time: 13:00 – 17:00 CEST
• 🌍 Location: Online (Zoom)

Agenda

Time (CEST)	Topic	Presenter
13:00 – 13:05	Welcome & Introduction	Yann
13:05 – 13:20	FAIR Mapping Recommendations	Yann
13:20 – 13:35	Refinements in the Mapping Framework	Nick
13:35 – 13:50	Governance Overview	Parham
13:50 – 15:00	Breakout Sessions: FAIR Mapping & Governance
15:00 – 15:15	Break
15:15 – 16:15	Breakout Session 2
16:15 – 16:55	Summary & Future Directions
16:55 – 17:00	Closing Remarks	Yann/Nick

Next Steps

Following the workshop, FAIR-IMPACT will publish a community-refined version of the FAIR Mapping recommendations, ensuring that best practices for mapping governance and sustainability are widely adopted.

For more details, visit the FAIR-IMPACT website.