From FAIR to top-notch: tips to further enhance research products’ quality
General Recommendations

While analysing the pilot research products of the ATLAS project, we identified common shortcomings in how the products were published and released to the audience, making it difficult for users to find key information such as the licence, and to understand how the product could be cited and used. These final recommendations are designed to help researchers overcome these problems and are applicable to all research product types, offering further tips that are not in the ALLEA guidelines.

Easy to find #

  • Choose a clear, descriptive title for your research product, including relevant keywords. If using an acronym, provide the full name for clarity.
  • Create a landing page for the research product, where the following information is prominently displayed:
    • access points to the data;
    • licence;
    • version number;
    • status (e.g., completed, under development).
    You don’t need to create a website if you can use existing platforms and solutions, such as the description associated with each record in Zenodo or a README file for GitHub repositories. Choose a platform that allows you to edit this information easily, so you can keep your landing page updated at all times. If you wish to create a website, practical and low-cost solutions are GitHub Pages, Google Sites, and Wordpress. Explore other tools in TAPoR.

Easy to cite #

  • Provide complete credits, including names, affiliations and persistent identifiers—when available—of creators, collaborators, and institutional partners. Include contact information for users to report issues or suggest collaborations.
  • Enhance citability by providing citation guidelines.
  • For products developed within a research project, describe the project or provide a link to its landing page, explaining how the product contributes to the project’s goals. For time-limited projects, specify the end date and outline future plans for preservation and maintenance.
  • Clearly state the licences of your research product’s website/landing page, and all its by-products.

Easy to use #

  • In the documentation describe the research product’s design and development process, including used tools and applied methodologies. If you have published this information as articles or development reports, provide links to these publications.
  • Provide a user guide and examples demonstrating how to utilise the research product.
  • To ensure efficient documentation management, maintain a single source document in a repository and generate different format versions from it as needed. Common tools for building documentation for a research project are GitBook and WikiMedia.
  • Offer metadata and documentation in English (in addition to other languages) to reach a broader audience.