About Making Models FAIR

A community-driven effort to build skills, practices, and protocols for transparent and reusable computational models.

Cover image: Network Visualization by Martin Grandjean, CC BY-SA 4.0

Our mission

Build capacity through shared, practical work.

We bring the modeling community together to improve the skills, practices, and protocols needed to make computational models FAIR. The initial catalog of highly cited models gives contributors a concrete place to learn, collaborate, replicate findings, and advance model analysis.

Explore the process

What is it?

A capacity-building, community driven initiative to increase the transparency and reproducibility of a selection of the most highly cited models across the social and ecological sciences. Learn more on the Details page.

Why get involved?

This initiative can be a great way to build your network and meet collaborators, introduce model replication challenges to your students, or simply contribute to a common good by making more models reproducible and interoperable. Learn more on the Details page.

How to get started

Learn about the FAIR principles, review the Making Models Fair Process, check out the Models list, and contact us with any questions. Learn more about the steps to get involved on the Getting Involved page.

Process for making a model FAIR

flowchart TD
  List(Check out model publications list) --> Identify(Identify what you would like to work on)
  Identify -- Choose from list --> Status(Check model status in making FAIR process)
  Identify -- Suggest new model --> Assess(Assess FAIR criteria and assign a score)
  Status -- Not yet started --> Create_repo(Create new GitHub issue, request repository)
  Status -- In process --> Collab(Collaborate on GitHub, contribute to community discussions)
  Create_repo --> Collab
  Collab --> FAIR(Make model FAIR!)
  Learn_GitHub([fab:fa-github Learn more about GitHub]) --- Collab
  Learn_FAIR([fas:fa-lightbulb Learn more about FAIR principles]) ---- FAIR
  Assess --> Create_repo
  FAIR --> Analyze(Do model analysis, replication studies)
  Analyze --> Paper(Write and publish paper or report)
  Paper --> Credit(Get credit for your hard work!)

  click List href "/docs/getting-involved/checklist/#one"
  click Identify href "/docs/getting-involved/checklist/#two"
  click Assess href "/docs/process/assessment/"
  click Status href "/docs/models/#selecting-a-model-and-getting-started"
  click Create_repo href "/docs/getting-involved/checklist/#four"
  click Collab href "https://github.com/orgs/make-models-fair/discussions" _blank
  click Learn_GitHub href "https://comses.net/education/intro-to-git-github/" _blank
  click Learn_FAIR href "https://comses.net/education/responsible-practices" _blank
  click Credit href "/docs/process/#get-your-fair-share"

  class Learn_GitHub,Learn_FAIR,GitHub_tutorial,GitHub_intro learn
  class Analyze,Paper optional

  classDef node font-weight:bold,stroke-width:3px,stroke:#28627c,color:#25343d,text-wrap:wrap
  classDef learn font-weight:bold,stroke-width:3px,stroke:#d8952f,color:#25343d,text-wrap:wrap
  classDef optional stroke-dasharray: 5 5
  linkStyle default stroke:#25343d,color:#25343d
      

New to Git and GitHub?

Please refer to this step-by-step tutorial to get started with GitHub, and read this introduction from GitHub Docs to dig a bit deeper.