FAIR Conformance¶
Source version 1.2.0. Draft for discussion and validation.
8. FAIR conformance overlay¶
8.1 Positioning¶
FAIR means that digital resources are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable by humans and machines. FAIR does not mean that every resource must be openly accessible, nor does FAIR alone guarantee intrinsic data quality, ethics, security or fitness for a particular decision. A resource may be FAIR while requiring authentication or operating under restrictive usage conditions, provided those conditions are explicit and machine-readable.
FAIR should be embedded as a cross-cutting conformance overlay across the GS1 profile family.
8.2 FAIR-to-profile requirements mapping¶
| FAIR principle | Semantic publication requirement |
|---|---|
| F1 | Assign globally unique and persistent identifiers to artefacts, versions and significant components. |
| F2 | Provide rich descriptive, technical, administrative, governance and provenance metadata. |
| F3 | Ensure metadata explicitly identify the artefact or distribution they describe. |
| F4 | Register or index metadata in a searchable catalogue, registry or discovery service. |
| A1 | Make metadata and permitted representations retrievable by identifier using a standard protocol. |
| A1.1 | Prefer open, implementable Web protocols and documented media types. |
| A1.2 | Support authentication and authorisation where needed without obscuring access conditions. |
| A2 | Preserve metadata and tombstone records even when a distribution or version is withdrawn. |
| I1 | Use formal, accessible and broadly applicable knowledge-representation languages, including RDF/JSON-LD, SKOS, OWL and SHACL where appropriate. |
| I2 | Use vocabularies that are themselves identified, documented, versioned and accessible. |
| I3 | Express qualified links to related artefacts, standards, concepts, mappings and provenance. |
| R1 | Provide accurate, relevant and sufficiently rich attributes for reuse beyond the original publication channel. |
| R1.1 | State licence and usage conditions clearly and machine-readably. |
| R1.2 | Associate detailed provenance with artefacts and distributions. |
| R1.3 | Conform to GS1 and domain-relevant community standards and profiles. |
8.3 FAIR profile deliverables¶
A FAIR-conformant publication package should include:
- a persistent identifier policy;
- DCAT or equivalent discovery metadata;
- a machine-readable licence;
- PROV-O or equivalent provenance;
- distribution metadata and access URLs;
- authentication and authorisation metadata where relevant;
- vocabulary dependencies;
- qualified relationships;
- a persistence and tombstone policy;
- a FAIR conformance report.
8.4 FAIR profile test question¶
Can a machine find the artefact, retrieve its metadata and permitted representations, interpret the semantics using accessible vocabularies, establish provenance and usage conditions, and determine whether it is suitable for reuse?