Reading material

FAIR software

Follow the links below to read about other resources related to the FAIR principles for research software.

FAIR principles (15 minutes)

The FAIR principles were originally introduced in this paper by Wilkinson et al.. This paper is a good starting point to learn more about FAIR, but if you are already familiar with the concept, a quick skim of the paper should do. The most important take-away from this particular paper is the point that FAIR, while originally a data-specific concept, was designed with other digital objects in mind as well.

FAIR software (10 minutes)

To extend the FAIR principles to software, the FAIR 4 Research Software working group was formed.

The FAIR4RS Principles were released in 2022, and since then there have been many efforts for adopting them.

Their paper Introducing the FAIR principles for research software describes in more practical terms how FAIR can be applied to software.

FAIR software (20 minutes, optional)

While the intepretation of the FAIR4RS working group has been the dominant set of principles since its publication, it was not the first attempt to apply FAIR to software. This paper by Anna Lena Lamprecht et al. was published a few years earlier, and also described an extension of the FAIR principles for software. The paper is a more elaborate in its descriptions of software, the different aspects of software, and how they are or are not addressed by FAIR. It is a good read if you want to get a deeper understanding of software and its relation to the FAIR principles.

FAIR Research Software Principles adoption

The blog post The FAIR for Research Software Principles after two years: an adoption update contains a summary of these efforts.