Table 1. Stakeholders and examples of how they could benefit from FAIRness governance.

Group	Stakeholder	Examples of possible benefits
GROUP A: FAIR practitioners	Researchers and research- performing organisations (domain-agnostic)	Researchers, in general, will be able to:     •   Get advice from their communities on what FAIRness assessment tools adjust best to their needs     •   Compare and select platforms supporting FAIR metadata, if possible, tailored to their research community     •   Compare and choose platforms supporting FAIR metadata for their particular digital object
	Research Software Engineers	Software Engineers will be able to:     •   Obtain a FAIRness assessment from a tool recognised by the governance body together with a summary that they can publish along with their software and data
	Domain-specific Research communities	Research communities will be able to:     •   Get advice from the FAIRness governance body on what FAIRness assessment tools can be better adjusted or adapted to their own needs     •   Joining with FAIR researchers, provide metadata standards tailored to their community
GROUP B: FAIR custodians	FAIR support stewards & trainers	FAIR stewards will be able to:     •   Assess the FAIRness of external digital objects used by the researchers they support, e.g., using one of the tools applying the guidelines provided by the FAIRness governance body.     •   Use guidelines provided by the FAIRness governance to improve FAIRness from the digital object design phase     •   Estimate the FAIRness of digital objects as they advance in the different stages of development and tune any necessary adjustments to improve the final FAIRness
	FAIR Repositories	FAIR repositories will be able to:     •   Use guidelines and recommendations provided by the FAIRness governance to improve their practices     •   Show their FAIRness to stakeholders
	FAIR tools developers and operators	FAIR tools developers will be able to:     •   Assess the FAIRness of the tools they develop as they progress in the different development stages, with the objective of incremental improvement     •   Assess the FAIRness of the data they use in their software tools, knowing that the assessment is compatible no matter what FAIR evaluator tool they choose so, if needed, they can later move to another one
	FAIR researchers	FAIR researchers will be able to:     •   Define metadata standards that have been certified as FAIR so their communities can later use them in the creation of tools and data     •   Identify FAIR metadata standards that can be used as part of their standard     •   Provide guidelines to their community regarding the creation of metadata and standards that will assure their FAIRness once they are ready to be assessed
	FAIR certification bodies	FAIR Certification Bodies will be able to:     •   Become and demonstrate their FAIRness by following the guidelines provided by the FAIRness governance body.     •   Provide transparent information on how to get a certification with them that follows the guidelines of the FAIRness governance body.
GROUP C: FAIR decision and policymakers	Funding agencies	Funding agencies will be able to:     •   Identify trusted FAIR assessment tools that are assuredly within the scope of the FAIR Principles and provide a transparent assessment     •   Suggest community-based FAIR assessment tools recognised by the FAIRness governance body. (which, e.g., make sure that the tools are within the scope of the community)     •   Understand and compare FAIR assessments provided by, e.g., their preferred tool (which can be a generic one) and that one used by the funded parties (which can be a community-specific one)
	Governments	Governments will be able to:     •   Create clear and transparent policies on the FAIRness of digital objects generated using public funding
	Publishers	Publishers and journal editors will be able to:     •   Select a trusted general-purpose FAIR assessment tool and integrate it into the submission platform so the published digital objects get a FAIR "badge."     •   Define a research impact metric based on FAIRness by using an assessment tool that follows the FAIRness governance guidelines