What does this mean?
This is a simple and obvious principle, but of critical importance to FAIR. The metadata and the dataset they describe are usually separate files. The association between a metadata file and the dataset should be made explicit by mentioning a dataset’s globally unique and persistent identifier in the metadata. As stated in F1, many repositories will generate globally unique and persistent identifiers for deposited datasets that can be used for this purpose.
Example
The connection should be annotated in a formal manner, for example using the foaf:primaryTopic predicate in the case of RDF metadata.
Links to Resources
The FAIRifier tool guarantees F3.