Skip to content

Make course materials open and FAIR

At SIB, we aim to have all our training materials Open and FAIR. In this context, Open refers to ‘publicly accessible’ and FAIR to Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. A good place to start would be the paper “Ten simple rules for making training materials FAIR”. As a second step, it is recommended that the trainer uses the ELIXIR FAIR training handbook to learn more about training materials FAIRification in practive. The flow chart below helps to organise the associated tasks to make your training materials FAIR.

The flow chart is not chronological

Note that the ordering in the flowchart is not in an order as you would apply to your training materials. It is rather a way to collect all the activities/resources. However, the numbering is ordered according to the descriptive text, and can loosly be considered as an order of importance, or even a chronological order.

Explanation of the different components

1. Metadata

Using metadata is important for making your materials findable and reusable. It is therefore very helpful to check whether the associated metadata is correct, in the right standard, and available. Metadata can be associated with training materials in many ways. Therefore, depending on the registries/databases you are using, you might have to make your metadata available in multiple places. More information in the FAIR training handbook, including on the richness of metadata.

Typically, the standard used is determined by the registry or database you are using. However, one commonly used standard is the Bioschemas Training Material standard. This standard is used by, amongst others, the TeSS registry. Another frequently used standard for metadata describing training material is the one used by Zenodo.

For ELIXIR related courses to appear in TeSS, you need to annotate them with the Training Material profile from Bioschemas (more on how to annotate ELIXIR materials in the ELIXIR Guide for Bioschemas Annotation of Training Assets).

@SIB: courses and their materials are automatically annotated based on Bioschemas, and automatically made available in TeSS. If a course is on GitHub and on Glittr.org, an additional Bioschemas annotation is available through Glittr.org, based on the metadata available from GitHub. When a GitHub repository is linked with Zenodo, also a metadata entry is created in Zenodo.

2. Attribution

Reuse is a good practice in developing training materials, and typically, it is absolutely necessary that you give credit to the original authors. You will find a comprehensive explanation of how to do this here:

In short, for CC-BY licensed materials, you need to provide the following information when reusing material:

  1. Title of the Work: Include the title of the original work, if available.
  2. Creator’s Name: Provide the name of the creator or author of the work.
  3. Source: Include a link to the original work, if applicable.
  4. License Type: Specify the type of Creative Commons license under which the work is released. Include a link to the license deed for clarity.

The attribution should be placed close to the material (e.g. on the same slide) but having it at a “credit” slide at the end of your presentation is also acceptable. Note that the original creator and the copyright owner are not necessarily the same. The original creator is usually a person, while the copyright owner can be the organisation the person was working for while creating the work. Typically, when providing attribution, you attribute a person – so the original creator.

@SIB: we have dedicated Copyright Guidelines for training materials, at which you can find more information on how to properly attribute and license your materials.

3. License

The default copyright laws apply if a license is not specified, meaning that no one can use, copy, distribute, or modify the materials. You need to add a license to allow others to use your materials. For many institutions, the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License is recommended. There are no specific requirements for how to display the license information. Of course, it helps if the license/copyright statement are easily findable. Here are some examples on where the information can be specified:

  • Footer of a document
  • Last slide of a presentation
  • Credits section of a video
  • In the README of a git repository

Note

in a GitHub repository it is common to add the full license text to the repository and add the copyright statement to the README.

Typically, the copyright and license are specified in a single line, for example:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. © [copyright owner(s)].

If the material contains copyrighted works of others that can’t be published under one and the same license, you can specify the following:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, unless otherwise specified. © [copyright owner(s)]. Attribution for Third-Party Works: Portions of this work include materials from [list the original creators or sources of the third-party works], used under their respective licenses.

Further information on licenses can be found here:

@SIB: we have dedicated Copyright Guidelines for training materials, at which you can find more information on how to properly attribute and license your materials.

4. Accessibility

In order to make materials open for re-use, it is important that potential re-users can easily access them, that they are in a format that can be re-used, and that they are persistently available. (Internal) servers and cloud instances are typically not a good option because they are often not stable in terms of permissions, availability, and persistence. Therefore, it is recommended to use GitHub linked with Zenodo, or, if you are not using GitHub, host materials on Zenodo. If Zenodo is not an option, you can also use other repositories like Figshare, or institutional repositories.

@SIB: we recommend using GitHub linked with Zenodo. As mentioned above, if GitHub is not used, materials can be hosted on Zenodo.

5. Versioning system

Using version control like git is a great way to share and collaborate on training materials. You can add your materials directly in the repository, e.g. in GitHub, and let participants interact with the materials through GitHub. It is also possible to host websites with GitHub pages, which might give a nicer interface for the course participants.

@SIB: we recommend using GitHub. You can use the following templates:

SIB courses are typically hosted within the SIB GitHub organisation. Contact a member of the SIB training team to get access to this organisation. If you name the repository, make sure it ends with -training. This way, it is clear that it is a training repository.

6. Zenodo

Zenodo is a repository that allows you to deposit your materials and assign a DOI (Digital Object Identifier) to them. It is a great way to make your materials persistent and findable. Zenodo can be used to host training materials, as well as other materials like software, data, and publications.

@SIB: If you are submitting course material to Zenodo, make sure you add it to the SIB training community. This way, all SIB training materials are findable in one place.

7. Persistent identifier

A persistent identifier (PID) is a long-lasting reference to a document, file, page, or other object. It is used to ensure that the object can always be found, even if the URL changes. The most common PID is the DOI, which is used for scientific publications. For training materials, the DOI is often used, but there are other PIDs that can be used as well. PIDs are typically assigned if you register your materials in a database or registry.

@SIB: For SIB courses, we recommend using Zenodo, which assigns a DOI to your materials.

8. Video materials

Training materials can consist of various types of files, including slides, datasets, notebooks, lecture videos, software, workflows, and more. All of these materials are valuable resources for both learners and trainers to reuse. However, with so many different types of materials, there are also numerous options for repositories. Here are some suggestions for sharing ELIXIR training material types:

  • Slides: Zenodo,
  • Workflows: WorkflowHubs,
  • Docker images: DockerHub,
  • Videos: YouTube or Vimeo. These platforms are very good for sharing and viewing videos, but they are not for long-term storage. For archiving, you can use Zenodo.
  • Datasets: usually it is recommended that you use the repositories that fit your datasets. For instance, ENA for genomics sequencing, PRIDE for proteomics data, etc. If you are not sure of the best repository for your datasets, you can look for the best options in Re3data.org or FAIRsharing.org.

@SIB: for videos, we use the SIB YouTube channel. More information here. Currently, we do not have a procedure in place for long-term storage. However, they are stored on the SIB servers.

9. Glittr.org

Materials that are hosted on GitHub are often hard to find, especially if they are not indexed elsewhere. Glittr.org is a platform that indexes GitHub repositories and makes them findable. It also provides additional metadata based on the metadata available in the GitHub repository.

@SIB: All SIB courses on GitHub should be available from Glittr.org. If your course material is missing, submit it at https://glittr.org/contribute

10. TeSS

TeSS indexes training materials and events from various sources, including GitHub repositories. It is a great platform to make your materials findable. TeSS uses the Bioschemas profile that can be automatically scraped from websites. An alternative to using Bioschemas is to manually add metadata to TeSS.

@SIB: All SIB courses on GitHub should be available from TeSS. They can have multiple entries, one from the bioschemas markup available from the SIB website, and one from Glittr.org. These two entries contain different metadata, so it is recommended to check both entries.

11. Communication

Although now your materials have been made FAIR, it is important to communicate this to the world. You can do this by sharing your materials on social media, in newsletters, or by presenting them at conferences.

@SIB: The recommended channel for sharing your training materials is through the SIB Training linkedin page.