For the first time, ZonMw and NWO-ALW included data stewardship as a selection criterion in a call for proposals. Applicants in the recent “Enabling Technologies Hotels” call were asked to complete a data stewardship section as part of their project proposal. Sander Hougee, programme officer at ZonMw: ‘At ZonMw we believe that data generated with public money should be made readily accessible to the entire research community. Furthermore, the programme committee of the Enabling Technologies Hotels call evaluated the first call and indicated that they want more emphasis on good data stewardship. Therefore, we included for the first time data stewardship as a selection criterion. This year we received 65 applications in total, of which we can approve at least 35%. That is a very reasonable success score, with which we are very pleased. In the previous year we received 99 applications of which 35 projects were granted. Since the maximum budget per project has been increased from € 20.000 to € 30.000 compared to last year, we expect the success percentage of this year to be similar to last year’s.
The requested data stewardship section is part of the ZonMw pilot project concerning tools to promote “Access to Data” and was developed together with our colleagues running that pilot project. We have asked data management experts from the Dutch Techcentre for Life sciences to evaluate all proposals with regard to data stewardship. Many of the applicants have good data stewardship plans. The applicants were given the opportunity to explain or improve their proposals, including the data stewardship section, during the rebuttal stage. As this is a learning process for us also, we will collaborate with DTL to see where we can further improve the data stewardship section.’
DTL works closely with ZonMw and NWO to arrange for grants that allow access to DTL associated technology hotels.
More information about data stewardship and the promotion of Access to Data at ZonMw can be found via the following links: