FAIR data are

data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete Value_(semiotics), values that convey information, describing quantity, qualitative property, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of sy ...

which meet principles of

findability Findability is the ease with which information contained on a website can be found, both from outside the website (using search engines and the like) and by users already on the website. Although findability has relevance outside the World Wide Web, ...

, accessibility,

interoperability Interoperability is a characteristic of a product or system to work with other products or systems. While the term was initially defined for information technology or systems engineering services to allow for information exchange, a broader defi ...

, and

reusability In computer science and software engineering, reusability is the use of existing ''assets'' in some form within the software product development process; these ''assets'' are products and by-products of the software development life cycle and in ...

(FAIR). The acronym and principles were defined in a March 2016 paper in the journal ''

Scientific Data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpr ...

'' by a consortium of scientists and organizations. The FAIR principles emphasize machine-actionability (i.e., the capacity of computational systems to find, access, interoperate, and reuse data with none or minimal human intervention) because humans increasingly rely on computational support to deal with data as a result of the increase in volume, complexity, and creation speed of data. CC-BY icon

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Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
The abbreviation is sometimes used to indicate that the dataset or database in question complies with the FAIR principles and also carries an explicit data‑capable

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FAIR principles, as published by GO FAIR

Acceptance and implementation of FAIR data principles

Before FAIR a 2007 paper was the earliest paper discussing similar ideas related to data accessibility. At the

2016 G20 Hangzhou summit The 2016 G20 Hangzhou summit was the eleventh meeting of the Group of Twenty (G20). It was held on 4–5 September 2016 in the city of Hangzhou, Zhejiang. It was the first ever G20 summit to be hosted in China and the second in an Asian coun ...

, the

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leaders issued a statement endorsing the application of FAIR principles to research. In 2016 a group of Australian organisations developed a Statement on FAIR Access to Australia's Research Outputs, which aimed to extend the principles to research outputs more generally. In 2017 Germany, Netherlands and France agreed to establish an international office to support the FAIR initiative, th
GO FAIR International Support and Coordination Office
Other international organisations active in the research data ecosystem, such as CODATA or

Research Data Alliance The Research Data Alliance (RDA) is a research community organization started in 2013 by the European Commission, the American National Science Foundation and National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Australian Department of Innova ...

(RDA) also support FAIR implementations by their communities. FAIR principles implementation assessment is being explored by FAIR Data Maturity Model Working Group of RDA, CODATA's strategic Decadal Programme "Data for Planet: Making data work for cross-domain challenges" mentions FAIR data principles as a fundamental enabler of data driven science. The

Association of European Research Libraries Association may refer to: *Club (organization), an association of two or more people united by a common interest or goal *Trade association, an organization founded and funded by businesses that operate in a specific industry *Voluntary associatio ...

recommends the use of FAIR principles. A 2017 paper by advocates of FAIR data reported that awareness of the FAIR concept was increasing among various researchers and institutes, but also, understanding of the concept was becoming confused as different people apply their own differing perspectives to it. Guides on implementing FAIR data practices state that the cost of a

data management plan A data management plan or DMP is a formal document that outlines how data are to be handled both during a research project, and after the project is completed. The goal of a data management plan is to consider the many aspects of data management, me ...

in compliance with FAIR data practices should be 5% of the total research budget. In 2019 the Global Indigenous Data Alliance (GIDA) released the

CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance were created to advance the legal principles underlying collective and individual data rights in the context of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (Canada), Uni ...

as a complementary guide. The CARE principles extend principles outlined in FAIR data to include Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, and Ethics to ensure data guidelines address historical contexts and power differentials. The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance were drafted at the International Data Week and Research Data Alliance Plenary co-hosted event "Indigenous Data Sovereignty Principles for the Governance of Indigenous Data Workshop," 8 November 2018, Gaborone, Botswana. The lack of information on how to implement the guidelines have led to inconsistent interpretations of them. In January 2020, representatives of nine groups of universities around the world produced the ''Sorbonne declaration on research data rights'', which included a commitment to FAIR data, and called on governments to provide support to enable it. In 2021, researchers identified the FAIR principles as a conceptual component of data catalog software tools, with the other components being metadata management, business context and data responsibility roles. In April 2022, Matthias Scheffler and colleagues argued in ''

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

'' that FAIR principles are "a must" so that data mining and

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech r ...

can extract useful scientific information from the data.

References

External links

{{scholia, topic
FAIR Data and Semantic Publishing
a statement from the lab of the first author of the original paper
Guide to FAIR Data
from Dutch Techcentre for Life Sciences
GO FAIR
initiative website
FAIR Principles
with detailed description of each of the guiding principles by the GO FAIR initiative
A FAIRy tale
explaining the FAIR principles, published by the FAIR project Political statements Open content Data management Open data Open science

FAIR principles, as published by GO FAIR

Acceptance and implementation of FAIR data principles

See also

References

External links