Open Science and Data Management Policy
Digital data management is becoming increasingly important as national and European research infrastructures promote Open Science policies throughout the European Research Area. The overarching framework in which this development occurs is the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) which forms a virtual environment for sharing and accessing research data across borders and scientific disciplines. The EU Open Science policy encourages the sharing of scientific data and knowledge to enable greater scientific and industrial innovation and to increase the public understanding of the importance of science to society and social policy. These goals are primarily achieved through open access publication of scientific results, the deposition of scientific data in repositories and catalogues following FAIR data principles (data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable), and the dissemination of scientific knowledge to the public through outreach initiatives and the promotion of citizen science.
EU-wide Open Science policies are designed to promote:
- Research efficiency by sharing data and knowledge openly
- Transparency of the scientific work process and reproducibility
- Academic rigour and research quality
- The development of new cross-cutting research themes
- The development of public scientific literacy
- The economic and social impact of science
- Scientific recognition of research infrastructures and institutions
Research data life-cycle:
Actors within the EOSC ecosystem:
(from eoscsecretariat.eu)
A useful guide to the issues surrounding data management is provided by Science Europe’s Practical Guide to the International Alignment of Research Data Management.
Scope:
CCMAR promotes the principles of Open Science in all of it’s research activities, except where data may be restricted by private contract, or otherwise sensitive. It is mandatory for all research output from ESFRI (the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) RIs to follow the Open Science principles of open access and FAIR data publication such that data are "as open as possible, as closed as necessary". At the national level, open access publication of research studies is mandatory, while strict adherence to a FAIR data publication policy is dependent on the funding call. In the near future Portuguese FCT SR&TD Project Grant calls will enforce a FAIR data publication policy, so adhering to these principles for current research is strongly encouraged.
FAIR Data:
FAIR data principles encourage the publication of scientific data so that they are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable. They emphasise the need for scientific data machine-operable and accessible to automated computer-driven systems thereby increasing their interoperability and applicability across disciplines. In short, these goals can be achieved by providing sufficient metadata to contextualise the data products, and depositing them in appropriate Open Science repositories. Metadata is information describing the data for publication, and typically includes unique identifiers and descriptors that follow standardised protocols, vocabularies, and ontologies. Many protocols and ontologies have been designed by research communities for specific research fields. For instance, the Minimum Information About a Plant Phenotyping Experiment (MIAPPE) describes a conceptual checklist of metadata required to adequately describe a plant phenotyping experiment using an agreed upon vocabulary that has been designed by the research community. Likewise, individual research fields and topics may have dedicated open access data repositories where researchers can deposit their FAIR data, e.g. European Nucleotide Archive (EMBL-EBI). However, several general Open Science data repositories also exist, such as EUDAT and Zenodo (CERN, OpenAire).
Data Management Plan (DMP):
A Data Management Plan describes the data management life cycle for the data to be collected, and the protocols to be followed to make the data FAIR.
A DMP should include information on:
- what data will be collected, processed, and/or generated
- which methodologies and standards will be used
- how the data will be made FAIR and open access, and
- how data will be curated and preserved at the end of the project
European Research Council Data Management Plan Template
Various online tools are available to help researchers design an effective DMP - the most appropriate for CCMAR researchers is the ARGOS service of OpenAIRE.
General Information:
Science Europe: https://www.scienceeurope.org/our-resources/practical-guide-to-the-international-alignment-of-research-data-management
EU Open Science: https://ec.europa.eu/research/openscience/index.cfm
EU Digital Skills for FAIR and Open Science Report: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/af7f7807-6ce1-11eb-aeb5-01aa75ed71a1
European Open Science Cloud – EOSC-Life: https://www.eosc-portal.eu/eosc-life
FAIR Data – Horizon 2020: http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/grants_manual/hi/oa_pilot/h2020-hi-oa-data-mgt_en.pdf
FAIR principles publication: https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201618
Open Science in Portugal:
FCT Open Science Portal: https://www.ciencia-aberta.pt/home
Portuguese National Bioinformatics Infrastructure BioData.pt|ELIXIR.pt: https://biodata.pt
Portuguese Forum on Research Data Policy: https://forumgdi.rcaap.pt
EOSC-Synergy Landscapes (Portugal): https://comum.rcaap.pt/handle/10400.26/32849
National Open Access Repositories: http://projecto.rcaap.pt
Sapientia (University of the Algarve): https://sapientia.ualg.pt
General Open Science Repositories:
EOSC Marketplace: https://marketplace.eosc-portal.eu
Registry of Research Data Repositories: https://www.re3data.org
EUDAT (EOSC): https://b2share.eudat.eu
Zenodo (OpenAire): https://about.zenodo.org
OpenAIRE (Portugal): https://www.openaire.eu/os-portugal
Dryad Digital Repository: https://datadryad.org/stash
PlutoF Data Management and Publishing Platform: https://plutof.ut.ee/#
FAIRsharing: https://fairsharing.org
Services:
OpenAIRE Argos DMP: https://argos.openaire.eu
Data Stewardship Wizard (Portugal): https://biodata-pt.ds-wizard.org
The Ontology Lookup Service (OLS): https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ols/index
Research Data Management (RDM) Kit: https://rdmkit.elixir-europe.org
FAIRcookbook: https://fairplus.github.io/the-fair-cookbook
FAIRassist: https://fairassist.org/#!
CESSDA Vocabulary Service: https://vocabularies.cessda.eu/#!discover
Training resources:
Foster Open Science Training Courses: https://www.fosteropenscience.eu/toolkit
Marine Domain Catalogues and Services:
European Biodiversity Information System (EurOBIS): https://www.eurobis.org
Integrated Marine Information System (IMIS): https://www.vliz.be/en/imis
Marine Data Archive: https://mda.vliz.be
EMBL-EBI Magnify (Marine Domain): https://www.ebi.ac.uk/metagenomics/browse?lineage=root:Environmental:Aquatic:Marine#studies
Pangea: https://www.pangaea.de
German Federation for Biological Data (GFBio): https://www.gfbio.org
World Register Of Marine Species (WoRMS): https://www.marinespecies.org
Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBif): https://www.gbif.org
Others:
RO-Crate: https://www.researchobject.org/ro-crate
Dublin Core Vocabulary: https://www.dublincore.org/specifications/dublin-core/dcmi-terms