Departmental FAIR checklists

Project overview: A pilot project was conducted in April-July 2022 to create discipline-specific guidance on how to make research data and software FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable & reusable) in seven departments across the University of Sheffield: Architecture, Biosciences, English, Geography, Mechanical Engineering, Psychology, and the School of Health and Related Research.

Methodology: Early Career Researchers and PGR students were commissioned to work as FAIR departmental leads, working with disciplinary colleagues to identify existing good practice and create a resource for researchers working within that area. Consultation was conducted and feedback sought, before the resources were launched and hosted at a local level as well as being archived to ORDA.

Checklist creators:

Architecture: Tha'er Abdalla 

Biosciences:  Deniz Simsek and Zuzanna Zagrodzka 

English: Daniel Bowman and Yi Liu 

Geography: Nerea Okong’o and Itzel Pineda  

Mechanical Engineering: Matt Tipuric and James Wingham

Psychology: Shuangke Jiang and Asia Szczepaniak 

School of Health and Related Research: Charlotte Cotterill

Note: the Biosciences team ultimately created a Google Site version of their checklist as they felt this was more easily negotiable by researchers. A text version of the content has been archived.

The project was organised by the Scholarly Communications Team, University of Sheffield Library, who also provided support to the checklist creators.