Openness

Interpretation by the GO FAIR community and adopted by the GO FAIR Foundation

 

In an ideal world, all data and accompanying services would be open and free. However, in reality we deal with privacy issues, national security issues, commercial interests and other reasons for data or services to be less than open as in ‘libre’ and as in ‘gratuit. Next to privacy rights and regulations there are many other non-commercial reasons to keep data in environments with controlled and restricted access. The A in FAIR stands in fact for accessible, under well defined conditions. In the spirit of the machine actionability core of FAIR, (virtual) machines should be as well served in terms of Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI), and understanding the conditions for reuse of data and other digital objects as people. 
 

In order to qualify whether a data or software resource will receive a positive ‘qualification’ from the GO FAIR Foundation we will have a nanopublication approach as well. In case the user asserts that the license (object) of the nanopublication is a fully open license (list will be provided) there will be ‘no further questions’.

 

In case any of the more restricted licenses is chosen, a dropdown menu with ‘legitimate reasons’ to choose that license will appear, each with their own Globally Unique and Persistent Resolvable Identifier (GUPRI) and choosing one of these options will generate machine actionable results. Narrative explanations can be given as well and proposing additional reasons for restriction will also be a possibility.