Fairspec Data Schema

Updated May 9, 2026

Fairspec Data Schema is a simple JSON-based format that defines Data Schema to describe a class of structured data resources. It is fully compatible with the JSON Schema standard.

Language

The key words MUST, MUST NOT, REQUIRED, SHALL, SHALL NOT, SHOULD, SHOULD NOT, RECOMMENDED, MAY, and OPTIONAL in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

Descriptor

A Fairspec Data Schema is a JSON resource that MUST be an object compatible with the Data Schema structure outlined below.

Data Schema

A top-level descriptor object defining a schema of structured data resources. It MIGHT have the following properties (all optional unless otherwise stated):

$schema

External Path to one of the officially published Fairspec Data Schema profiles or https://json-schema.org/draft/2020-12/schema with default value https://fairspec.org/profiles/latest/data-schema.json.

For example for version X.Y.Z of the profile:

{
  "$schema": "https://fairspec.org/profiles/X.Y.Z/data-schema.json"
}

<jsonSchema>

Dataset supports all the properties defined in Json Schema Draft 2020-12. For example:

{
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "name": {
      "type": "string"
    },
    "age": {
      "type": "integer"
    }
  }
}

Common

Common properties shared by multiple entities in the descriptor.

External Path

It MUST be a string representing an HTTP or HTTPS URL to a remote file.

For example:

{
  "data": "https://example.com/datasets/measurements.csv"
}

Extension

Fairspec Data Schema does not support extension.

Comparison