Distribution
A criteria for GO FAIR Foundation qualification
As distributed as possible, as centralized as necessary
As distributed as possible, as centralized as necessary
Interpretation by the GO FAIR community and adopted by the GO FAIR Foundation
The FAIR guiding principles do not explicitly require or recommend distributed approaches. However, in the spirit of the ‘Internet of FAIR data and services', the GO FAIR Foundation highly recommends to use distributed approaches wherever possible. Reasons are not only to keep ‘data at the source’ (including proper curation and metadata at the source for privacy reasons, enabling GDPR compliant data visiting for example), but also security aspects (distributed systems are more difficult to hack), distribution of workload and costs (expensive retrospective and central curation), and finally, less options for vendor lock in. This policy is therefore meant to stimulate the most requitable, open and transparent ecosystem with a level playing field and a ‘net neutrality aspect’ with full respect for ‘privacy by design’, ideally with the control over consent for reuse of personal data for particular purposes at the level of the individual (or designated proxy) and for other sensitive data by the data owner or custodian.
