A Journal of FAIR Overlays

A translucent overlay journal could publish FAIR assets based on existing open-access publications.

Typically, an overlay journal is transparent – it is a window to selected already-available content. The value added to the existing body of content is that of curation.

However, scholarly digital assets – data, algorithms, tools, workflows, etc. – that support the narratives expressed in many publications are often insufficiently FAIR. The primary emphasis of many journals is on publishing the narrative, whereas digital assets are often de-emphasized as “supplementary information”.

For a journal of FAIR overlays, the narrative is supplementary. Source narratives need not be re-published, that is, the journal is an overlay journal. The value added to the existing body of content is that of “FAIRifying” the data, information, knowledge, and wisdom (DIKW).

Rather than resorting to natural language processing (NLP) of published narratives, researchers could instead reference and repurpose a source publication’s core digital assets through one or more journal-of-FAIR-overlays publications, which are themselves scholarly objects that can be cited.