FAIR

OK — it stands for Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse. FAIR is all about the computerization of digital assets; the capacity of computational systems to use data without a need for an operator to make choices for the machine. The Go-fair website tells us that these principles date from 2016 and lists them. “The principles emphasize machine-actionability (i.e., the capacity of computational systems to find, access, interoperate, and reuse data with none or minimal human intervention) because humans increasingly rely on computational support to deal with data as a result of the increase in volume, complexity, and creation speed of data.” Keeping your data and metadata clean and consistent is perhaps the key. The Scholarly Kitchen reports that among researchers awareness of FAIR principles has grown from 15% in 2018 to more than 40% in 2025 — perhaps not too impressive. Don’t we want these machines to be able to read all this stuff and report on it for us too?…