1. Introduction to FAIR Principles

What are FAIR Principles?

The FAIR principles are a set of guidelines for scientific data management and stewardship (Boeckhout et al., 2018). Launched in 2016, the FAIR principles provide a set of best practices for sharing data that respects legal and/or contractual restrictions. FAIR stands for: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.

The FAIR Principles can be used to make your data more fit-for-retrieval and use by other researchers. The principles also emphasize the capacity for machines/computers to automatically find, access, interoperate, and reuse data with little or no human intervention (FAIR Principles, n.d.). This means that when you adhere to the FAIR principles, you are making data understandable to machines or computers.