GO FAIR food systems implementation network manifesto – to advance a global data ecosystem for agriculture and food by implementing FAIR data and services
Creators: name: Schaap, Ben
name: Aubin, Sophie
name: Ferreyra, Andres
name: Knibbe, Willem Jan
name: Hologne, Odile
name: Finkers, Richard
name: Jacquelijin Ringersma
name: Scholz, Uwe
name: Zervas, Panagiotis
name: Baker, Chris
name: Waagmeester, Andra
name: Kok, Ruben
name: Parr, Martin
name: McQuilton, Peter
name: Brouwer, Matthijs
name: Sansone, Susanna
name: Schultes, Erik
name: Jonquet, Clement
name: Whitehead, Brandon
name: Drucker, Debora Pignatari
name: Mullier, Graham
name: Subirats, Imma
name: Lange, Matthew
name: Marie-Angelique Laporte
name: Xuefu Zhang
Publisher: name: F1000 Research Limited
Year: 2019

description: Agri-food systems are facing unprecedented societal, economical, and environmental challenges to feed 2 billion more people by 2050. In order to effectively address these pressing global challenges we need better availability of data. The heterogeneous nature of many data sources force us to think about interoperability of the data for better reuse, both by humans and machines. For better reuse of data, we need to achieve a shared understanding of how we describe and publish data, in a semantically grounded manner.<br><br><i>GO FAIR</i><br>The GO FAIR initiative has initiated a global movement of implementation networks (IN’s) for the FAIR data principles. Collectively implementation choices of the IN’s from various sectors will showcase how effective implementation of the FAIR data principles can be done without duplications efforts.   <br>Purpose of the Food Systems Implementation Network<br>The purpose of the Food Systems IN is to support the implementation of FAIR principles in agri-food sciences, in providing guidelines, tools, methods, etc. with specific efforts towards achieving semantic interoperability. To this end, the Food Systems IN will boost the adoption and implementation of recommendations from existing initiatives such as RDA working groups and interest groups, GODAN working groups, and W3C. All IGAD members are welcome to join the Food Systems IN.<br><br><i>Overarching Principle of Operation</i><br>The IN will leverage the ecosystem of current organizations and projects willing to commit to guiding principles for implementing the FAIR data principles in Food Systems as described in the Food Systems IN manifesto.<br>This manifesto is signed by a broad range of organizations who came together in different data related engagement structures to implement FAIR data and services in Food Systems research and to work towards a global data ecosystem for agriculture and food.<br>Though we appreciate diversity, especially in the research field, we consider this joint statement a way to speak with one voice on a number of critical issues that are of generic importance and on which we feel we have reached consensus. We will therefore coordinate our investments in and support of the technological and social developments in the distributed management and analysis of food systems data. We also commit to comply with the Rules of Engagement of GO FAIR Implementation Networks.<br><br><i>Targeted Objectives</i><br>In order to address the global challenges related to Food Systems with FAIR data we will work on the following objectives that adhere to the above guiding principles:<br>To  advocate for FAIR data principles in data sharing policies.<br>To  foster the continued implementation of FAIR principles based on existing      recommendations and if needed support to create new ones. Facilitate agreement on the use of vocabularies, standards and protocols.<br>To disseminate best practices to a large community of practitioners.