FAIR data is research data which meets the FAIR principles: Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability and Reusability. Some of these principles – especially around findability and accessibility – can be met through depositing research data in a suitable repository, whether in the university’s institutional repository (Worktribe) or a specialist data repository. Other principles, such as around interoperability, require more attention to be paid to the structure of the data itself.

FAIR data goes beyond simply making the data underpinning research openly available online – though this is still important. The principles aim to get researchers thinking more carefully about how their data could be found, used, and interrogated by future researchers. This ties into other work around research integrity and requires a shift in mindset beyond thinking about research data only as an input into a particular paper.

Any Edinburgh Napier University researchers who are considering publishing their research data can contact the repository team about the practical steps to make this happen. We can provide long-term availabilty for research data, with a DOI to help make it more discoverable and citable, under an appropriate open licence. Of course, this must be done with due regard to ethical considerations if the dataset contains e.g. personal, sensitive, identifiable data.

Update 15 Dec 2025: We’ve produced a short video on making your research data available to help Napier researchers add it to Worktribe.