Announcing a New Fiscally-Sponsored Project: FAIR Station

We are pleased to announce FAIR Station is the newest project to join Code for Science & Society. FAIR Station is focused on reimagining and optimizing the field station reservation process as an opportunity to shape how research data are managed, connected, and shared. Their innovative approach is directly in line with CS&S’s mission to “advance the power of data... through scientific research, technology development and deployment.” CS&S is honored to be the organizational home for this work.

Across many areas of research, field stations and marine laboratories are where science begins. Yet the process of reserving time and resources is typically a lightweight administrative workflow. It often relies on spreadsheets or ad hoc systems that do little to support consistent metadata capture, policy alignment, or downstream data stewardship. FAIR Station reimagines this starting point as the foundation for a continuous, interoperable research workflow that connects fieldwork, laboratory practice, and data publication.

To accomplish this, the FAIR Station initiative is building a next-generation, open-source reservation and research tracking platform that connects field-based scientific research activities to the outputs generated. It streamlines how fieldwork is managed and ensures that station activity is visible and discoverable. By capturing essential metadata, assigning persistent identifiers, and aligning data sharing and compliance requirements at the outset, the platform will enable traceable, attributable, and reusable research outputs from the very beginning of a project.

This work will be led in partnership with the University of California Curation Center (uc3.org) and the UC Natural Reserve System (ucnrs.org). Their existing platforms and expertise offers a great baseline for the new FAIR Station team to work from. With financial support from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, the impact of this work will expand to serve the global community of field stations and marine laboratories. Looking ahead, FAIR Station is not simply an open source tool but part of a broader ecosystem of interoperable research infrastructure that integrates with laboratory systems, repositories, and persistent identifier services.

Our efforts to support FAIR Station have already started. We are now actively recruiting for a Product Manager for the project, funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. Please see the job description at https://www.codeforsociety.org/jobs.

CS&S is thrilled to provide a home for this work and to support its open, community-driven development. FAIR Station reflects a shared commitment to sustainable open infrastructure and research practices that begin with stewardship from the very first steps of scientific discovery. Please join us in welcoming FAIR Station.