Compilation of Recommendations

Details

Short Title

FsF-A1-01M Metadata contains access level and access conditions of the data.

Source Documnent

FAIRsFAIR Data Object Assessment Metrics

Source Document Link

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4081213

Publishing Organisation

FAIRsFAIR

Date of Publication

2020-10-12

Topic

Metadata richness/ ingest/ submission, Access/ integration

Addressed Stakeholders

data service providers, research community, data stewards

Keywords

metadata, access

Text

This metric determines if the metadata includes the level of access to the data such as public, embargoed, restricted, or metadata-only access and its access conditions. Both access level and conditions are necessary information to potentially gain access to the data. It is recommended that data should be as open as possible and as closed as necessary. - There are no access conditions for public data. Datasets should be released into the public domain (e.g., with an appropriate public-domain-equivalent license such as Creative Commons CC0 license) and openly accessible without restrictions when possible. - Embargoed access refers to data that will be made publicly accessible at a specific date. For example, a data author may release their data after having published their findings from the data. Therefore, access conditions such as the date the data will be released publically is essential and should be specified in the metadata. - Restricted access refers to data that can be accessed under certain conditions (e.g. because of commercial, sensitive, or other confidentiality reasons or the data is only accessible via a subscription or a fee). Restricted data may be available to a particular group of users or after permission is granted. For restricted data, the metadata should include the conditions of access to the data such as point of contact or instructions to access the data. - Metadata-only access refers to data that is not made publicly available and for which only metadata is publicly available.