The advancement of digital science thrives on the timely sharing and accessibility of digital data. Accordingly, the need for development of infrastructures and services that enable a systemic change of science practices to Open Science is now strongly advocated by both research and funding organizations.
The FAIR principles strengthen these developments. Consequently research institutions, funders and publishers have significantly stepped up their demands on research data management and opening up research data for reuse. In the European Commission’s Open Research Data Pilot the FAIR principles are applied in order to encourage funded researchers to ensure that their data is soundly managed and subsequently shared.
The FAIR Data Principles are a set of guiding principles in order to make data findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (Wilkinson et al., 2016). These principles provide guidance for scientific data management and stewardship and are relevant to all stakeholders in the current digital ecosystem. They directly address data producers and data publishers to promote maximum use of research data. Research libraries can use the FAIR Data Principles as a framework for fostering and extending research data services.
FAIR is an acronym for Findable, Accessible, Inter-operable and Reusable and used to explain the new principles about Research Data.
Findable
The first step in (re)using data is to find them. Metadata and data should be easy to find for both humans and computers. Machine-readable metadata are essential for automatic discovery of datasets and services, so this is an essential component of the FAIRification process.
F1. (Meta)data are assigned a globally unique and persistent identifier
F2. Data are described with rich metadata (defined by R1 below)
F3. Metadata clearly and explicitly include the identifier of the data they describe
F4. (Meta)data are registered or indexed in a searchable resource
Accessible
Once the user finds the required data, she/he needs to know how can they be accessed, possibly including authentication and authorisation.
A1. (Meta)data are retrievable by their identifier using a standardised communications protocol
A1.1 The protocol is open, free, and universally implementable
A1.2 The protocol allows for an authentication and authorisation procedure, where necessary
A2. Metadata are accessible, even when the data are no longer available
Interoperable
The data usually need to be integrated with other data. In addition, the data need to interoperate with applications or workflows for analysis, storage, and processing.
I2. (Meta)data use vocabularies that follow FAIR principles
I3. (Meta)data include qualified references to other (meta)data
Reusable
The ultimate goal of FAIR is to optimise the reuse of data. To achieve this, metadata and data should be well-described so that they can be replicated and/or combined in different settings.
R1. Meta(data) are richly described with a plurality of accurate and relevant attributes
R1.1. (Meta)data are released with a clear and accessible data usage license
R1.2. (Meta)data are associated with detailed provenance
R1.3. (Meta)data meet domain-relevant community standards
Source: GO-FAIR
Source: OpenAIRE
Source: CGIAR