Everybody wants to play FAIR, but how do we put the principles into practice? In this webinar the FAIR Guiding Principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) and the DSA (Data Seal of Approval were discussed and compared and a tangible operationalization was presented. The Webinar was co-organised by DANS, EUDAT &OpenAIRE, on 12 and 13 December, 2016. There is a growing demand for quality criteria for research datasets. In this webinar we will argue that the DSA (Data Seal of Approval for data repositories) and FAIR principles get as close as possible to giving quality criteria for research data. They do not do this by trying to make value judgements about the content of datasets, but rather by qualifying the fitness for data reuse in an impartial and measurable way. By bringing the ideas of the DSA and FAIR together, we will be able to offer an operationalization that can be implemented in any certified Trustworthy Digital Repository. 

The FAIR principles are remarkably similar to the underlying principles of DSA (2005): the data can be found on the Internet, are accessible (clear rights and licenses), in a usable format, reliable and are identified in a unique and persistent way so that they can be referred to. Essentially, the DSA presents quality criteria for digital repositories, whereas the FAIR principles target individual datasets.