What is FAIR?

The FAIR principles (with their 15 underlying facets) are a set of standards intended to make data Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. They are designed to facilitate knowledge and data sharing by humans and machines, support data and knowledge integration, promote standardising processes and outputs, and encourage sharing and reuse of data. They help to make data and metadata ‘machine readable’, thereby enhancing/supporting new discoveries through the harvest and analysis of multiple datasets and outputs.

FAIR is a set of nationally and internationally recognised principles which are endorsed by many governmental and academic organisations worldwide. Since being published in 2016 the FAIR principles have provided an important framework for documenting and sharing data and outputs in a way that maximises use and reuse (www.ardc.edu.au). The FAIR principles refer to three types of entities: (1) data (or any digital object), (2) metadata (information about that digital object), and (3) infrastructure. The following text is taken from https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/.

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.

Facets:

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, they need to know how they can be accessed, possibly including authentication and authorisation.

Facets:

A1. (Meta)data are retrievable by their identifier using a standardised communication     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 or if the data are confidential

INTEROPERABLE

The data usually need to be integrated with other data. In addition, the data need to interoperate with applications and/or workflows for analysis, storage, and processing.

Facets:

I1. (Meta)data use a formal, accessible, shared, and broadly applicable language for knowledge representation

I2. (Meta)data use vocabularies that follow FAIR principles

I3. (Meta)data include qualified references to other (meta)data

REUSABLE

Facets:

The 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