Science Europe and the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) have launched an initiative for the voluntary international alignment of research data management policies. They presented the initiative on 30 January in Brussels, at the ‘Open Science and Sharing Research Data: Towards European Guidelines on RDM Procedures’ event.
Open Science is high on the political and scientific agenda in Europe, and access to and sharing of research data are central to that. Many research funders, institutes, and universities are developing policies for managing research data in an Open Science environment, in order to to stimulate good data governance and stewardship. A better alignment of these policies, however, will reduce the administrative burden on researchers and research organisations.
Science Europe and NWO want to create this alignment by exploring ways to establish core research data management requirements, as well as a list of trusted repositories where researchers can store their data for sharing. These should create a uniform basis on which organisations can develop more specific policies. Science Europe and NWO encourage other organisations in the research landscape to join forces in this endeavour. Science Europe will therefore launch a first round of consultations in the early spring of 2018; interested organisations are invited to contact the Science Europe Office.
Workshop
The workshop on 30 January was well-attended with over a hundred participants from a great variety of EU institutions, Science Europe Member Organisations, other research organsations, and data experts. Robert-Jan Smits, Director-General for Research and Innovation, said that the European Commission strongly supports this initiative: “Science Europe members can be the game changer in this area: the key to transition is in your hands and the Commission will be your partner in this endeavour.” For more information on the initiative and the 30 January event, please visit the Science Europe RDM Initiative page.
About Science Europe
Science Europe is an association of European Research Funding Organisations (RFO) and Research Performing Organisations (RPO), based in Brussels. It promotes the collective interests of the Research Funding and Research Performing Organisations of Europe.