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Research Funders | Policy Content
A policy should address the following issues:
- Open access as default. The policy should set open access for research data as the default requirement and provide appropriate support and funding (e.g. expenses for storage). Such policy should be mandatory and not voluntary and should be an explicit and public document. The possibility for closed data should be accommodated when ethical, copyright, confidentiality, security and similar issues are demonstrably of key concern.
- Responsibilities. The policy should assign responsibilities and set out the expectations for the main stakeholders involved, namely: funders, researchers (either under their capacity of grant applicants or grant holders), research institutions, data centers and repositories.
- Target content. The policy should be explicit on which data should be open. Open access should be required for research data used to validate scientific claims in publications, while open access to other data produced in the project may be required to be open as well, including associated metadata. While open access to the research data itself may not always be possible, deposit in repositories/data centers with open metadata should be required.
- Data Management Plan. The policy should require grant applicants who will generate data to provide Data Management Plans, which is emerging as the main tool through which to address comprehensively data management, including access to data. Templates for DMPs should be provided along with resources.
- Time of deposit. The policy should require data supporting publications to be made open ideally at the latest at the same time with the publications and link to it, while other data by the end of the project.
- Locus of deposit. The policy should require deposit in certified and trusted repositories and/or data centers that are of relevance to the scientific communities. Funders provide suggested or specific and obligatory data centers or repositories where researchers are to deposit their data.
- Technical specifications to allow reuse. To enable research data reuse and citation funders should require information on metadata, DOI, interoperability of systems, machine readability and mineability and software in the policy.
- Licensing research data. The policy should require that research data is accompanied by licensing describing the terms of use, such as Creative Commons licenses. Preferably licensing information should be machine-actionable.
- Provisions for long-term availability. Policies should include provisions for the long-term availability of data, since re-use and availability are primary reasons for open access to research data.
- Compliance with policy. The policy should make statements regarding compliance to it by the researchers and clarify measures for non-compliance (e.g. funder may refrain from delivering the full amount of funding in cases of non-compliance).
