The FAIR principles have been accepted globally as guidelines for improving data-driven science and data management practices, yet the incentives for researchers to change their practices are presently weak. In addition, data-driven science has been slow to embrace workflow technology despite clear evidence of recurring practices. To overcome these challenges, the Canonical Workflow Frameworks for Research (CWFR) initiative suggests a large-scale introduction of self-documenting workflow scripts to automate recurring processes or fragments thereof. This standardised approach, with FAIR Digital Objects as anchors, will be a significant milestone in the transition to FAIR data without adding additional load onto the researchers who stand to benefit most from it. This paper describes the CWFR approach and the activities of the CWFR initiative over the course of the last year, highlights several projects that hold promise for the CWFR approaches, including Galaxy, Jupyter Notebook, and RO Crate, and concludes with an assessment of the state of the field and the challenges ahead.
Binary star DataBase (BDB) is the database of binary/multiple systems of various observational types. BDB contains data on physical and positional parameters of 260,000 components of 120,000 stellar systems of multiplicity 2 to more than 20, taken from a large variety of published catalogues and databases. We describe the new features in organization of the database, integration of new catalogues and implementation of new possibilities available to users. The development of the BDB index-catalogue, Identification List of Binaries (ILB), is discussed. This star catalogue provides cross-referencing between most popular catalogues of binary stars.
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