Good practices for FAIR data management: an interview with Sebastian Lequime on FAIR challenges in virology, open-source tools, and the role of journals and AI

Part of open science is that researchers make their data FAIR: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. But how to do this? In the Open Science Blog, DCC asks researchers to tell us more about their data management choices.

In this edition, we speak with Dr. Sebastian Lequime , assistant professor at the Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences (GELIFES), of the Faculty of Science and Engineering. His research group uses genomics and modeling to understand viral evolution and ecology, focusing on RNA viruses transmitted by insects. Their recent publication explores the FAIRness of Endogenous Viral Element (EVE) datasets and offers recommendations for improving data accessibility in this niche but growing research field. We asked him about his work on viral evolution, the development of the open-source tool detectEVE, and his perspective as Data Editor for the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.