I have had this on my todo list for way too long: writing about FAIR Implementation Profiles, or FIPs for short (see also doi:10.1007/978-3-030-65847-2_13):

The FIP is a collection of FAIR implementation choices made by a community of practice for each of the FAIR Principles.

In the early GO FAIR days, people referred to the challenges and choices. FIPs are a formal approach to report the choices. The days of the implementation networks, like the Chemistry Implementation Network (doi:10.1162/dint_a_00035), or the AdvancedNano network (doi:10.1016/j.impact.2024.100513). For the first, we absolutely agreed on the InChI, for example, but we never wrote that down as a FIP. But even without FIPs, the idea was that communities could learn from each other, could converge. This is where the term FAIR Convergence Matrix comes from. (I had forgotten I was actually part of the matching Working Group. If only I had dedicated funding for it at the time.)

Now, I had on my wishlist to write up a list over FIPs around chemistry. This is relevant for the FAIR4ChemNL project, but obviously beyond that. And while we did a lot of FAIRification work in, particularly, the nanosafety cluster projects (eNanoMapper, NanoCommons, NanoSolveIT, RiskGONE, and SbD4Nano), a lot of this never was formalized as FIPs. Second, various relevant standards have been proposed in chemistry, for chemical compounds and transformation products, among plenty of other things. But during the first ELIXIR Toxicology Community workshop in Utrecht, we had FIPs on the agenda too (see this report).

FIPs in Chemistry

But while I had already several browser tabs open for months, I never could find the courage to start making the list. Silly. Therefore, this list should be considered a start. I don’t think it is exhaustive. I know there is an index somewhere, but I cannot find back that browser tab. Additions are most welcome: I will update this post (thanks to git and Rogue Scholar). In brackets I list (a selection of) the FAIR enabling resources mentioned in that FIP.

Is that all? No, I do not think so, but this is all I can easily find (ironically). Well, I guess you now see why I have had a so much trouble starting to write down this post… Someone will surely give me some pointers…

Ackknowledgments

I also like to thank all the people involved in these FIPs. I strongly encourage you to look up all the people who wrote them down. I also like to thank the INTOXICOM workshop FIP experts Iseult Lynch and Gerhard Burger for sharing their knowledge.

Finally, I recommend checking out the FIP Wizard.