Building expertise on FAIR through evolving Bring Your Own Data (BYOD) workshops: describing the data, software, and management-focused approaches and their evolution

Abstract Since 2014, “Bring Your Own Data” workshops (BYODs) have been organised to inform people about the process and benefits of making resources Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable (FAIR, and the FAIRification process). The BYOD workshops’ content and format differ depending on their goal, context, and the background and needs of participants. Data-focused BYODs educate domain experts on how to make their data FAIR to find new answers to research questions. Management-focused BYODs promote the benefits of making data FAIR and instruct project managers and policy-makers on the characteristics of FAIRification projects. Software-focused BYODs gather software developers and experts on FAIR to implement or improve software resources that are used to support FAIRification. Overall, these BYODs intend to foster collaboration between different types of stakeholders involved in data management, curation, and reuse (e.g. domain experts, trainers, developers, data owners, data analysts, FAIR experts). The BYODs also serve as an opportunity to learn what kind of support for FAIRification is needed from different communities and to develop teaching materials based on practical examples and experience. In this paper, we detail the three different structures of the BYODs and describe examples of early BYODs related to plant breeding data, and rare disease registries and biobanks, which have shaped the structure of the workshops. We discuss the latest insights into making BYODs more productive by leveraging our almost ten years of training experience in these workshops, including successes and encountered challenges. Finally, we examine how the participants’ feedback has motivated the research on FAIR, including the development of workflows and software.