Narrating FAIR: recognising and rewarding FAIR practices and the use of narrative CVs

On Wednesday 5th March 2025 colleagues from ARC piloted the new interactive workshop: Narrating FAIR: recognising and rewarding FAIR practices and the use of narrative CVs

The initial ideas for the workshop were generated as part of the FAIR Data Accelerator Workshop, an activity of the FAIR Data Accelerator Pilot Project. The aim of the workshop was to co-design professional development activities/interventions to address social and cultural barriers to data sharing.

Key themes that emerged from a study undertaken by the FAIR Data Accelerator Pilot Project team were Lack of recognition and Leadership as enabler. As cultural norms and values are associated with individual recognition, researchers strongly value data ownership. These norms can either be reinforced by research leaders who might impede FAIR practices or challenged by those who actively promote and recognise such practices.

FAIR stands for Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reproducible. The FAIR principles facilitate responsible and trusted cultures of data sharing but also support open and reproducible research initiatives.

The Narrating FAIR workshop aimed to help reduce the lack of recognition identified as a barrier to FAIR practices and to start to amend cultural norms. It was thus designed to inform research leaders of the benefits of sharing, and how to recognise FAIR practices through the narrative CV. Narrative CVs are supported by UKRI and provide a structured written description of a person’s contributions and achievements that reflect a broad range of relevant skills and experiences (learn more about Narrative CVs).

By the end of the workshop we hoped that participants would be able to:

• recognise the benefits of FAIR practice,
• recognise FAIR on Narrative CVs,
• construct an example Narrative CV for their area demonstrating FAIR,
• and express ways forward in recognising and rewarding FAIR in their context.

The pilot workshop was attended by six colleagues from varying areas across UCL and with differing roles, alongside members of the FAIR Data Accelerator Pilot Project team.

The workshop was predominantly interactive, with a large proportion of time given over for discussion and a co-creation activity. One of the themes arising from the discussion was career pathways, and how it isn’t always possible to recognise and reward FAIR practices in current structures for those in post-doc or certain Professional Services roles. Could and should FAIR principles related practices be included as Desirable in job descriptions?

Feedback received from colleagues was positive, with the workshop receiving an overall experience rating of 4.29 out of 5. Participants particularly valued the opportunity to interact with others and hear other perspectives. There was also some learning around Narrative CVs and their synergy with FAIR . Feedback comments from attendees indicated that the workshop had made them reconsider their own application of the FAIR principles.

One of ARC’s internal research themes is ‘Transforming research communities”, and this workshop aligns with this theme. As such we aim to run further iterations of this workshop in the future.