The VO, FAIR Principles and Open Science

The Virtual Observatory (VO) is a global ecosystem of interoperating services that connect worldwide data archives. The VO is implemented in all major astronomy archives through common interfaces developed by the 22 members of the International Virtual Observatory Alliance (IVOA). It was founded in 2002, and the latest members, the SKA Observatory and the Kazakhstan Virtual Observatory, joined in 2022. The IVOA has since its inception supported the goals of Open Science and what are now known as FAIR principles: Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable. Implementation of the common interfaces, defined and documented as what are called VO protocols, go a long way towards implementing the FAIR principles. A total of eleven of the 16 enumerated FAIR principles are or will be implemented when VO protocols are employed. The remainder are generally out of scope for the IVOA. The VO acts a democratizing influence in astronomy: it provides equal access to worldwide public data sets to under-served communities as to large data centers, and enables international participation in scientific research and education. Thus astronomers from many different communities are positioned to participate in the big science questions emerging in astronomy in the 2020s.