FAIR+S: A validation study of a framework for sustainable research data and software
For researchers and research infrastructures, this work provides a validated framework to integrate sustainability into existing FAIR-aligned practices, though it highlights current awareness gaps.
The paper validates the FAIR+S framework, an extension of FAIR principles that embeds environmental accountability for research data and software, through a cross-disciplinary expert survey. The evaluation confirms its importance and practical relevance but reveals gaps in researchers' awareness of green software practices.
The FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) have transformed research data management, but they do not address the environmental impact of creating and using research software and data, such as energy consumption, carbon emissions, and life-cycle impacts that become central to computer science and engineering-related domains. To bridge this gap FAIR+Sustainability or FAIR+S, an extension of the FAIR framework that embeds environmental accountability as a core element, was introduced. Because FAIR principles already structure how digital research artefacts are described, shared, and reused, they offer an effective entry point for embedding sustainability considerations at scale. FAIR+S weaves carbon-footprint and energy-use considerations directly into FAIR-aligned metadata schemas, workflows and development specifications. In doing so, it enables research infrastructures to report, compare, and audit the environmental implications of data and software in a measurable, interoperable, and transparent manner. This creates a foundation for reproducible research that simultaneously advances open science goals and decarbonisation objectives. However, integrating environmental accountability into established research workflows raises questions of feasibility, relevance, and acceptance across stakeholders and disciplines. In this work we validated the framework through a cross-disciplinary expert survey. The evaluation confirms its importance and practical relevance, but also reveals current gaps in researchers' awareness of green software practices.