This step authorises and activates the release of the validated research object deployment under appropriate rights, access and privacy conditions, and provides the documentation, support and monitoring needed for its intended reuse.
A research object does not need to be openly accessible to be FAIR. Depending on its content, intended users and applicable conditions, release may be:
- Public and open.
- Publicly discoverable but available under registered access.
- Available only to approved users.
- Available only within a secure processing environment.
- Embargoed until a defined date or event.
- Shared with a defined consortium, service or community.
- Limited to public metadata while the research object remains controlled.
- Divided into public, controlled and restricted representations.
Rights, privacy and release requirements should be considered throughout the FAIRification activity. This step performs the final review of these requirements against the specific release candidate and authorises the resulting release.
Use this step during project examination to identify rights, privacy, release and reuse-support requirements and the authorities responsible for them. During an implementation cycle, use it to review and approve a release candidate, activate the agreed access mechanisms, publish the required information and establish ongoing support and monitoring.
Research object access
Research object retrieval
Research object deposition
Research object versioning
Research object transfer
Rights and reuse conditions
Privacy and disclosure control
Release management
Rights and reuse conditions
Authorise and communicate the terms under which a research object and its components may be accessed, used, modified, combined and redistributed.
This capability includes declaring rights holders and release authorities; evaluating licences, contracts and third-party terms; selecting suitable licences or rights statements; defining permitted uses; and communicating the resulting conditions to people and machines.
The capability may be provided by rights holders, legal advisers, research organisations, repositories, data-access committees, ethics or information-governance functions, community authorities or other authorised decision-makers.
Resources
2 FAIR Metroline items
- Define access conditions Setting the terms for access, sharing and reuse makes define access conditions directly relevant to licensing.
- Creating a FAIR Implementation Profile (FIP) Community documentation of licence choices helps make licensing decisions more transparent and consistent.
5 FAIR Cookbook items
Privacy and disclosure control
Identify, assess and manage the risk that releasing a research object, metadata or associated information could expose personal, confidential, sensitive or otherwise restricted information.
This capability is broad and complex and its nature will vary greatly depending on the research object and intended use. For example, anonymisation may be inappropriate or insufficient where the information is highly distinctive, where external information creates linkage risks or where removing sufficient detail would undermine the intended use.
The capability may be provided by information-governance, data-protection, statistical-disclosure, ethics, security or domain specialists and by authorised data-access or release bodies.
Resources
3 FAIR Metroline items
- Define access conditions Access conditions depend in part on how privacy risks are handled through anonymisation.
- Data access and retrieval Protecting privacy through anonymisation can enable safer access to and retrieval of data.
- Obtain informed consent Consent conditions shape how anonymised data may later be used and reused.
Release management
Define, approve, activate, document and manage a specific release of the research object.
This capability controls when and what is being released through which channels and interfaces, which version and representations are included, where they are available, who may access them and which conditions apply.
The capability may be provided through repository deposition and approval workflows, institutional release procedures, community governance, project release management or combinations of these.
Resources
4 FAIR Metroline items
- Register resource level metadata Releasing data requires metadata that makes the resource discoverable and understandable to others.
- Transform and expose FAIR (meta)data Publishing data and metadata in FAIR ways is a core part of data release.
- Define access conditions Clear decisions on access rights and reuse conditions are necessary before data can be released.
- Assess availability of your metadata Availability of sufficient metadata helps determine whether data is ready for release.