Adherence to the FAIR Principles

We discuss here the adherence of the form descriptions generated by the FormGenerator application to the FAIR principles. Each (sub-)principle is denoted between brackets (e.g. "(F1)").

Findable

As we make use of the Linked Data principles, we assign globally unique and persistent identifiers (F1). Existing ontologies are reused, each offering more information by dereferencing the properties (F2). Using the binding property (exact predicate URI depending on the used vocabulary), the meaning of the form field is included (F3). The URI to the binding property is always defined using a unique predicate per vocabulary (F4).

Accessible

The standard HTTP protocol, REST and SPARQL are used for resource retrieval (A1, A1.1). Authentication and authorization is complementary, and is achieved by using the Solid protocol, which uses other protocols such as Solid-OIDC for authentication and WAC for authorization (A1.2). Descriptions of the used properties remain available, even when the form description is no longer available, and vice versa (A2).

Interoperable

The form descriptions are described using [Turtle](cite:cites turtle), a textual syntax for the standardized language RDF to represent data on the Web (I1). The used vocabularies follow the FAIR principles by design as they adhere to the Linked Data principles (I2). Using the bindings on the form elements, references to metadata about the form fields exist (I3).

Reusable

One of the main goals of the form descriptions is to enable reuse of data. The conformance of the form descriptions to the requirements is analyzed in the previous section and as a result they are described with sufficient attributes (R1). No data usage license (R1.1) is added by default, but users can opt in by manually adding the license description in RDF to the form description. Provenance of the generated data is added by using the prov:wasGeneratedBy predicate of the PROV Ontology to link back to the form description used to generate the data. By reusing and extending existing vocabularies to describe forms, we improve the reusability and follow community standards (R3).