USGS State of the Data Project: Rubric and Assessment Data

The FAIR Principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) provide a concise and measurable strategy for optimizing the reuse of scientific data (Wilkinson et al., 2016). In FY20, the U.S. Geological Survey initiated a research study, titled "State of the Data", to evaluate and report on the current FAIRness of USGS data. Project outputs include the USGS FAIR Rubric, which can be used to evaluate a dataset against the FAIR principles, and the results of ~400 USGS dataset assessments completed using this rubric. These results will provide a baseline for measuring future improvement in FAIRness of USGS public data. This data release contains the FAIR rubric in .xlsx format, the assessment dataset in .csv format, and the Python code used to create the assessment dataset. Wilkinson, M., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, I. et al., 2016, The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship: Scientific Data, v. 3, no.1, [article 160018], 9p, https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18.