The FAIR Funding Model: Providing a Framework for Research Funders to Drive the Transition toward FAIR Data Management and Stewardship Practices

A growing number of research funding organizations (RFOs) are taking responsibility to increase the scientific and social impact of research output. Also reusable research data are recognized as relevant output for gaining impact. RFOs are therefore promoting FAIR research data management and stewardship (RDM) in their research funding cycle. However, the implementation of FAIR RDM still faces important obstacles and challenges. To solve these, stakeholders work together to develop innovative tools and practices. Here we elaborate on the role of RFOs in developing a FAIR funding model to support the FAIR RDM in the funding cycle, integrated with research community specific guidance, criteria and metadata, and enabling automatic assessments of progress and output from RDM. The model facilitates to create research data with a high level of FAIRness that are meaningful for a research community. To fully benefit from the model, RFOs, research institutions and service providers need to implement machine actionability in their FAIR RDM tools and procedures. As many stakeholders still need to get familiar with “human actionable” FAIR data practices, the introduction of the model will be stepwise, with an active role of the RFOs in driving FAIR RDM processes as effectively as possible.