A new publication by Science Europe provides support and practical advice for the international alignment of research data management.
At an event in Brussels on 29 January, Science Europe launched its latest publication, the “Practical Guide to the International Alignment of Research Data Management”. The guide aims at aligning the different needs of research funding organisations, research organisations and individual researchers concerning research data management across organisations in Europe. Experts from Science Europe member organisations developed the guide in consultation with a wider research stakeholder community. It shall give practical advice on how to set up data management plans, and on which criteria to use to select trustworthy repositories. The guide leads researchers through translating these core requirements into a Data Management Plan (DMP) template. It touches upon issues such as data quality and documentation, storage and backup during the research process, legal and ethical requirements, data sharing and long-term resources. Moreover, the guide helps researchers ensure that their data is compliant with the FAIR data principles (findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable).
Research data management is gaining importance in the light of open science and the development of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The European Commission welcomes the newly published guide. It will push for the application of the proposed data management approaches in the next European research and innovation framework programme Horizon Europe.