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FAIR Principles

The FAIR Principles are a set of principles for data and metadata management and stewardship: findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability. The acronym was coined by a consortium of scientists and organizations in Scientific Data (2016) to improve the management of digital assets.

For data to be “FAIR,” it must be:

  • Findable: Data need to be easy to locate for both humans and computers.
  • Accessible: Data need to be accessible to users.
  • Interoperable: Data need to integratable with other data and interoperable with applications and workflows for analysis, storage, and processing.
  • Reusable: Data need to be well-described so they can be used in different settings.

FAIR emphasizes machine-actionability since data’s increase in volume and complexity has made people more dependent on computational support.

Further Resources​