Data should be findable, and the most straight forward way to do that is to write metadata for the dataset, and then have that metadata registered with a data discovery tool. Most data repositories will automatically handle registering the metadata and making it searchable; YoDa, the UU institutional repository does this using the DataCite metadata standard.  

Regardless of the licensing of the dataset, creating the metadata and including access rules, and who to contact for possible access makes the dataset findable. 

Data, where appropriate, should be made openly accessible and licensed with an open data license. Data that is not able to be openly published, such as personal data, should have contact information so that someone searching for data can contact someone to inquire about gaining access to the dataset.  

Data should be published in an open format that is interoperable with most applicable software, also in an open format so other software can be extended to work with that format.  

Data sets should be re-useable so that others can conduct new science, and also verify results from previous studies. To meeting the re-useability principle, data should be published with an interoperable file format, and licensed with the most open license possible for the data.  

• Go Fair – Principles
• The paper that introduced the FAIR principles: Wilkinson, M. D., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, Ij. J., Appleton, G., Axton, M., Baak, A., Blomberg, N., Boiten, J.-W., da Silva Santos, L. B., Bourne, P. E., Bouwman, J., Brookes, A. J., Clark, T., Crosas, M., Dillo, I., Dumon, O., Edmunds, S., Evelo, C. T., Finkers, R., … Mons, B. (2016). The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Scientific Data, 3(1), 160018. https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18