Let's learn about F.A.I.R data - Episode #3

The recent article covered the first principle in Findability, and this article will cover the remaining three Findability FAIR principles.

F2: Data are described with rich metadata

I randomly went into Downloads section in my PC and randomly picked one file and went to check it properties. Below screenshot for reference:

If you closely look at it, you can find answers to many question of the file I have opened. Let's try answering some..

When it was created ? 18th Aug 2023

What's the size ? 44.5 MB

When this was last updated ? 26 Aug 2023

Let's try to get an inferential answer, What is this file all about ? The file type says .MP4 so it should be a video file and as title says life long learning, it could be a video on life long learning??.

Interesting isn't it ? These rich metadata helps the Findability aspect for FAIR data and just imagine the same way, if an organisation catalog all its data assets, it will provide exponential benefits.

F3: Metadata clearly and explicitly include the identifier of the data they describe

This principle is a linkage between the F1 and F2 principles. Just to recap, in F1 we have to assign a persistent unique identifier to the data and F2 is about describing rich metadata about the data, so F3 is all about how we can interlink both these two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chandrayaan-3

Here the Chandrayaan-3 can be considered as persistent unique identifier and in case you are storing a rich metadata in a file named Chandrayaan_metafile.mtf, if you have this persistent unique identifier in the metafile, then we have achieved the third principle. Let's quickly get over the fourth principle so that we can achieve soft landing on Findability principles like Chandrayaan-3 did on Moon ! ????

F4: (Meta)data are registered or indexed in a searchable resource

Once we achieved all three findability aspects or principles, it is not easily findable then it is of less use. So, the data with PURI(Persistent Unique Resource Identifier), with rich metadata that is interlinked with actual data needs to be registered (Put an entry) or inter-connected (indexed) in a searchable way or medium - In simple terms, the data should be catalogued appropriately.

Again a classic example is to refer Government of India's Open data portal (https://data.gov.in/catalogs)

You can search for a dataset of interest, once you find it, you can find rich metadata describes it and the data itself has an unique identifier that refers it. I picked this https://data.gov.in/resource/water-quality-ground-water-2008 and below is an illustration of F1,F2 and F4 principles, F3 is something internal and usually not shown to the user or public but this ensures the data and metadata are intact ??.

Hope you have now got some good understanding of Findability Principles and in the next article, we can start discussing about the next letter "A" - Accessibility.

I take this moment to congratulate ISRO and take pride in the soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 in the moon's south pole, it is not just a significant achievement of India but a great feat for the world in the space exploration. I did tried checking for availability of FAIR data from ISRO and they do have one, please have a check at this https://www.issdc.gov.in/, if you are interested - Happy Learning and Exploring !! ??????