Geoscience data publication: practices and perspectives on enabling the FAIR guiding principles

Abstract

Introduced in 2016, the FAIR Guiding Principles endeavour to significantly improve the process of today's data-driven research. The Principles present a concise set of fundamental concepts that can facilitate the findability, accessibility, interoperability and reuse (FAIR) of digital research objects by both machines and human beings. The emergence of FAIR has initiated a flurry of activity within the broader data publication community, yet the principles are still not fully understood by many community stakeholders. This has led to challenges such as misinterpretation and co-opted use, along with persistent gaps in current data publication culture, practices and infrastructure that need to be addressed to achieve a FAIR data end-state. This paper presents an overview of the practices and perspectives related to the FAIR Principles within the Geosciences and offers discussion on the value of the principles in the larger context of what they are trying to achieve. The authors of this article recommend using the principles as a tool to bring awareness to the types of actions that can improve the practice of data publication to meet the needs of all data consumers. FAIR Guiding Principles should be interpreted as an aspirational guide to focus behaviours that lead towards a more FAIR data environment. The intentional discussions and incremental changes that bring us closer to these aspirations provide the best value to our community as we build the capacity that will support and facilitate new discovery of earth systems.