Overview
Teaching: 5 min
Exercises: 0 minQuestions
External pressure for Open Science and FAIR
Objectives
To be acquainted with the surrounding pressure to adhere to the principles of Open Science and FAIR
Why should you apply good data management practices and strive to make your research output FAIR?
Primarily because it will benefit your research. But there are other motivators.
Globally, there is an increasing demand at the political level for Open Science and FAIR.
The political landscape
Already in 2012, the European Commission recommended the member states to establish national guidelines for Open Access (publications and data). The Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet, VR) submitted a proposal to the government in 2015. The government in the Research Bill of 2017 stated an ambition that “research data underlying scientific publications should be openly accessible at the time of publication”. In 2018, VR was assigned by the government to coordinate national efforts to implement open access to research data.
EU and the G20 have endorsed the FAIR principles. EU has established the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), that aims at being a trusted environment for sharing and analysing data from all publicly funded research. Making the FAIR principles work is central to the realisation of this vision.
Open data directive
There is also EU “Open data directive” (2019/1024) from June 2019, that is to be implemented into national member state laws by 16 July 2021. The directive has writings about research data, and states that “EU countries must adopt policies and take action to make publicly funded research data openly available, following the principle of ‘open by default’ and support the dissemination of research data that are findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (the ‘FAIR’ principles)”. A proposal about at Swedish Open Data law to implement this directive has been presented to the government in September 2020.
Funders and universities
Funders are to a larger extent demanding that the data generated by research project that they fund is made available. All future EU funding will demand data management planning where FAIR aspects are considered. In Sweden, the VR Links to an external site., Formas Links to an external site., and Riksbankens jubileumsfond Links to an external site. are demanding Data Management Plans for grants.
Universities are starting to establish research data policies (see e.g. Stockholm university Links to an external site.) that calls for public access to publicly funded data, and the adherence to the FAIR principles.
Carrot or stick?
The political push for Open Science and FAIR can be considered as more of a stick than a carrot for researchers, but it will not become a reality if researchers don’t see the carrot, and if infrastructure and training are not available. The aim of this course is to encourage you to use good Data Management practices to make your research easier in the long run, so that you can meet the emerging demands in this area from the society.
References
Turning FAIR into reality Links to an external site., European Commission Expert Group on FAIR Data
EU “Open Data Directive” (2019/1024) Links to an external site.