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FAIR4RS Software Citation Principles

An extension of the FAIR Guiding Principles to research software, articulating that software should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable, with the precise interpretations adapted to software's distinctive properties (executability, versioning, dependencies).

ByCASRAI Editorial Board

· Last updated 21 May 2026

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Examples

Worked examples

Is an instance
A research-software project archived on Zenodo, indexed by Software Heritage, with semantic versioning and a CITATION.cff file.
Is an instance
An institutional policy requiring FAIR4RS-compliant deposit of project software outputs.

Counter-examples

Looks similar, but isn't

Not an instance
A GitHub repo with no release tags, no licence, and no citation file.
Not an instance
A FAIR dataset description (FAIR-for-data, not FAIR4RS).

Editorial commentary

The FAIR4RS principles were finalised by an RDA working group in 2022. They differ from FAIR-for-data principles in treating versioning, metadata for executability, and licensing as central. They underpin contemporary software citation guidance from FORCE11's Software Citation Working Group.

References

Chue Hong et al., 'FAIR Principles for Research Software (FAIR4RS Principles)' (RDA, 2022).

Also known as

FAIR4RS · FAIR for Research Software

Machine-readable encodings

Use in your systems

JATS XML <role> element

xml

<role vocab="credit"
      vocab-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/"
      vocab-term="FAIR4RS Software Citation Principles"
      vocab-term-identifier="https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/fair4rs-software-citation-principles" />

Schema.org DefinedTerm (JSON-LD)

json

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "DefinedTerm",
  "@id": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/fair4rs-software-citation-principles",
  "name": "FAIR4RS Software Citation Principles",
  "identifier": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/fair4rs-software-citation-principles",
  "description": "An extension of the FAIR Guiding Principles to research software, articulating that software should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable, with the precise interpretations adapted to software's distinctive properties (executability, versioning, dependencies).",
  "inDefinedTermSet": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/domain/reproducibility#set",
  "url": "https://casrai.org/dictionary/term/fair4rs-software-citation-principles",
  "sameAs": [
    "FAIR4RS",
    "FAIR for Research Software"
  ],
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "publisher": {
    "@id": "https://casrai.org/#organization"
  },
  "dateModified": "2026-05-21T02:22:49",
  "inLanguage": "en"
}

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