FAIR Data Principles

Under Australia’s FAIR Access Policy Statement, all publicly funded research outputs must follow the FAIR principles.

The FAIR Principles have been developed to make research more visible and to allow researchers to more easily collaborate and maximise the return on investment in research and innovation. The acronym stands for:

Findable

Data can be more findable by: properly describing what the data is; putting it in a permanent and easily searchable place; and making it easy for humans and computers to search for it.

Accessible

Data can be more accessible by: using non-proprietary, standardised and automated methods to supply the data to those who want or need it; letting others know how they can get the data; and letting others know if the data is no longer available.

Interoperable

Data can be more interoperable by: storing and providing the data in widely-used and accessible file formats; describing the data using standard terms (vocabularies) that are relevant and widely known; and describing if it relates to other data and what exactly that relationship is.

Reusable

Data can be more reusable by: making it clear how the data was collected or if there are validity concerns; making any conditions of reuse clear in license readable to humans and machines; and meeting the standards used within the relevant research community.