Lifeboat Foundation

That’s why more than 100 repositories, communities, societies, institutions, infrastructures, individuals and publishers (including Springer Nature, the publishers of Nature) have signed up since last November to the Enabling FAIR Data Project’s Commitment Statement in the Earth, Space, and Environmental Sciences for depositing and sharing data (see http://). The principles state that research data should be ‘findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable’ (FAIR)2. The idea is not new, but aligning this broad community around common data guidelines is a radical step.

All disciplines should follow the geosciences and demand best practice for publishing and sharing data, argue Shelley Stall and colleagues.