A major update has been made to the FAIRsFAIR Data Object Assessment Metrics, as a response to several community efforts of analysing and reviewing existing metrics and suggesting improvements and the experiences gained in FAIR-IMPACT over the past three years while exploring discipline-specific metrics development. F-UJI has also been updated to now support these new metrics, allowing for automated FAIR assessments in line with the most recent understanding and implementation of FAIR.
Initially developed in the FAIRsFAIR project, the Data Object Assessment Metrics have been in the continuous care of the University of Bremen and DANS and have been updated over time to reflect increased understanding of FAIR implementation, technological advancements, and community feedback. This most recent update of the metrics is a more significant one and responds to several recent publications that have evaluated FAIR metrics and provided sound feedback (e.g. Gehlen et al. 2022, Sun et al, 2022, Aguilar and Bernal, 2023, Moser et al., 2023, and Candela et al, 2024). Aside from these community publications, knowledge has also advanced through different experiences in FAIR-IMPACT, including the FAIRness assessment challenge and the development of discipline-specific metrics.
The three main overarching changes made to the metrics are:
- Focus on FAIR instead of data and metadata quality or veracity
- Emphasis on the dataset level, not the repository level
- Completeness and balance in the coverage of the FAIR principles
Several metrics have been updated, added, or (partly) removed. Justifications for these changes are detailed in the publication of the new metrics. This culmination of three years of explorations and community consultations, showcasing continuous improvement of F-UJI and FAIR assessment in general.
The care for these metrics will continue beyond the lifetime of FAIR-IMPACT. More on this and how FAIR-IMPACT will care for their 19 identified important outputs will soon be published in our Sustainability Plan.
Find the F-UJI tool in the FAIR Implementation Framework Catalogue
