FAIRsharing record for: FAIR Metric - The content associated to a DOI is Open Access

This FAIRsharing record describes: ### What is being measured?

This metric only applies to digital objects represented by DOIs and evaluates whether those objects are officially designated as "Open Access" within global scholarly indexes. The evaluation utilises the provided DOI to query authoritative third-party aggregation services, such as Unpaywall or OpenAlex. It verifies the is_oa (or equivalent) status attribute within the resulting record to confirm that the resource is publicly accessible without financial or registration barriers. For publications entities, it ensures that its content, or a allowed copy is open access. For dataset entities it ensures that the data is open access (with or without embargo period).

### Why should we measure it?

FAIR Principle F4 mandates that (meta)data are registered or indexed in a searchable resource. Simply hosting a record on a local repository is insufficient for global findability; the record must be "discovered" and ingested by external systems. This metric is useful because:

* Verification of Indexing: It provides machine-actionable proof that the repository's metadata has been indexed by major global discovery platforms.
* Enhanced Findability: Being indexed in aggregators like OpenAlex significantly increases the likelihood of the resource being found by researchers outside of the host institution.
* Public Accessibility: Confirming the Open Access status ensures that the indexed record is pointing to a resource that is reachable

While originally created as part of the OSTrails project to fulfil requirements within the PaNOSC cluster, this metric is subject agnostic and can be re-used by any community with these requirements.