The Sorbonne Declaration unites 160 universities in their commitment to opening up research data and demanding a legal framework to regulate data sharing.
On 27 January, the Sorbonne University together with the University of Amsterdam and University College London hosted an ‘International Research Data Rights Summit’ in Paris. The summit gathered nine networks of research-intensive universities comprising 160 institutions from all around the world. The summit offered its participants the opportunity to sign the Sorbonne Declaration on Research Data which confirms the signatories’ commitment to opening up research data and calls for governments to create a legal framework to regulate the sharing of data and to provide the needs to put the framework in place. With the declaration, the signatories want to address the research community itself, but also governments and funding bodies supporting the production of research data with public money. Research data is also an economic issue and managing it better and sharing it could save up to €10.2 bn per year, says a report produced by PwC for the European Commission. In addition, making research data accessible can accelerate scientific discoveries and innovation, which creates further economic benefits. The League of European Research Universities (LERU) with the University of Zurich and the University of Geneva as members is also among the signatories.
CESAER, the united voice of universities of science and technology in Europe, is also contributing to the discussion on Research Data Management (RDM). On 13 February, CESAER published its latest white paper ‘Advancing Research Data Management in Universities of Science and Technology’. The paper describes RDM as a prerequisite for the fulfillment of FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, re-usable) data principles and as a consequence for the production of robust and reusable science. It is based on a survey with CESAER’s member institutions (incl. ETH Zurich and EPF Lausanne) conducted in 2019 which addressed: i) the establishment of RDM policies at the universities, ii) the provision of suitable RDM infrastructure and tools and iii) the establishment of RDM support services and training. It thus gives an insight into the state of the art in RDM at technical universities in Europe and makes recommendations towards RDM advancement.
RDM also concerns research funders. ScienceEurope, the association of major research funding and research performing organisations in Europe (also covering the Swiss National Science Foundation) had already launched a practical guide for the international alignment of RDM a year ago, in January 2019. Based on its member organisations’ (MO) experience with the guide, ScienceEurope now published a new report titled ‘Implementing Research Data Management Policies across Europe’. The report features the MOs’ approaches in developing and implementing data management plan requirements, and identifies the associated challenges met by researchers, their home institutions and the funders themselves. It subsequently provides guidance to develop requirements for data management plans in three practical steps.
Research data management and data sharing are also a big issues for the social sciences and humanities (SSH). The All European Academies Association (ALLEA) thus published a dedicatet report on “Sustainable and Fair Data Sharing in the Humanities” on 18 February. The report provides recommendations for aligning data in the humanities with the FAIR principle and is written as a practical guideline directly to scholars, but also to research funders and policy makers. The report is structured along the data management life cycle from (1) identifing data to (2) planning, (3) collecting and producing, structuring and storing, (4) depositing for preservation, citing & sharing and finally (5) disseminating it. The report respects the different data sharing cultures across disciplines, but also encourages interdisciplinary data practices.
RDM and the full use of research data is at the top of the European agenda. At her speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos earlier this year, President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, mentioned the importance of RDM, but also that its implementation remains divergent across Europe. RDM also features prominently in the next European research and innovation framework programme, Horizon Europe. Research Data will have to be open by default and the submission of a RDM plan will become compulsory within the programme’s Open Science policy.