6 The FAIR Principles
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Lesson 6 of 18
The FAIR principles are 15 guiding principles for improving the findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability of digital data (Jacobsen et al., 2020; Wilkinson et al., 2016).
The FAIR principles can be thought of as implementable on a continuum. Not all data sets can be made FAIR to the same degree, but they can all be made more or less findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. For example, a data set that cannot be made open because of ethical or legal obligations may be described and deposited with access restrictions in place.
One goal of FAIR is that data sets be machine-actionable; however, it is important to note that not all data is, or can be made, machine actionable (this applies, for example, to some forms of raw data or images). However, such data can still be documented with FAIR metadata that describes it.
