Standardized Assessments

FAIR Assessments

In their current format, most FAIR assessment tools are not yet capable of handling / assessing decentralized web technologies. Their workflows have been (understandably) designed with assessing the FAIRness of legacy systems in mind.

A few examples of this disconnect in practice:

• In legacy systems, PIDs resolve to a journal's website instead of resolving straight to their intended resource (i.e. the pdf). This introduces an extra step for machines actionability which relies on a social contract with a 3rd party (journals need to maintain consistency and standardization in their website). Introducing this extra step to machine actionability undermines persistence. As such, DeSci Nodes avoids this step and resolves straight to the CID being referenced (i.e. pdf, code, etc). Since the nodes architecture prioritizes persistence and simplicity in machine actionability instead of adhering to legacy workflows, we regularly fail (and will purposefully continue to fail) this particular check.

• Assessment tooling checks for machine actionable navigation instructions using legacy methods (i.e. signposting). We use IPLD and DAGs to provide machines with more comprehensive navigation instructions. While this new method of navigation is more comprehensive and persistent, it does not fall within the standard workflow and fails the subsequent assessment checks.

• Many assessment tools are built on a sequential workflow targeted at the legacy system. If you fail F3 (for example the tool only checks for signposting), the tool is not able to check requirements for F4 and subsequently fails the FAIR enabling resource for all following requirements (F4, A1.1, A1.2, A2, I1, I2, I3, R1.1 and R1.2). This results in artificially deflated scores for tooling that does not adhere to the legacy system.

We practice a strict adherence to persistence, decentralization and security. FAIR Assessment tooling is still in early stage and is improving daily. We hope that this tooling will generalizable across architectures in the future. Decentralized web technology is the gold standard of red principle implementation, and we are excited to work with the community to build understanding and implementation around this. We understand that this technology is new and are happy to help where we can.