FAIR assessment of MINERVA as an opportunity to foster open science and scientific crowdsourcing in systems biomedicine

Abstract

1The Disease Maps Project (https://disease-maps.org) focuses on the development of diseasespecific comprehensive structured knowledge repositories supporting translational medicine research. These disease maps require continuous interdisciplinary collaboration and should be reusable and interoperable. Adhering to the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) principles enhances the utility of such digital assets. We used the RDA FAIR Data Maturity Model and assessed the FAIRness of the Molecular Interaction NEtwoRk VisuAlization (MINERVA) Platform. MINERVA is a standalone webserver that allows users to manage, explore and analyse disease maps and their related data manually or programmatically. We exemplify the FAIR assessment on the Parkinsons Disease Map (PD map) and the COVID-19 Disease Map, which are large-scale projects under the umbrella of the Disease Maps Project, aiming to investigate molecular mechanisms of the Parkinsons disease and SARS-CoV-2 infection, respectively. We discuss the FAIR features supported by the MINERVA Platform and we outline steps to further improve the MINERVA FAIRness and to better connect this resource to other ongoing scientific initiatives supporting FAIR in computational systems biomedicine.