A little late in reporting on this, but I wanted to share this short blog post with the RDA community to spread awareness on an Interest Group that is still under TAB review, however I look forward to see how it progresses!

Everyone’s contribution is important on this stage in order for the group to better reflect community’s needs and therefore successfully meet its expectations in the future. I believe that this was also what Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, chair of the “IG Data policy standardisation and implementation”, expected when running an open discussion with attendees towards the end of the group’s session at the RDA 9th Plenary Meeting in Barcelona. The outcome of the very productive afternoon can be found here.

Before getting into more details with some of the IG’s objectives, let’s have a quick look at the data policy landscape in Europe:

Research data-related activities are in dependence in Europe. Research Data Management practices are under the microscope in search of the best ones to be followed and innovative infrastructures that will hold and preserve this data, such as the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC pilot project), are under development. It was, therefore, expected that the next logical step on this journey was the creation of a standard documentation to support these activities within interorganisational as well as national and international schemas.

Nationally, for OA policies within the EU:

Due to several socio-economic issues, each country has different pace in advancing in research development and innovation. The “Snapshot of Open Data and Open Science Policies in Europe” forms the latest outline of achievements and attempts made from EU and EEA countries in opening their governmental and research data to the public. It also gives insights from national OA policies established for that reason.

More specific:

Regarding RDM, well-stated in an email that I received recently was the fact that even HEFCE, which is one of the four organisations that wrote and published the UK Concordat on Open Research Data, doesn’t have a specification on its RDM requirements.

With policy making being by definition a meticulous procedure, behaviours like these make even more challenging the ascension of initiatives with a mission to find common practices and standardise data policies.

Current state of the IG Data Policy Standardisation and Implementation - the Springer Nature paradigm:

Moving towards that direction, from the publisher's view, Springer Nature developed a set of data types to be adopted by its journals, each one with defined requirements for data publishing. It is worth mentioning that nearly 1000 journals have engaged in following them.

This primary standardisation constitutes the core of the forthcoming deliverables produced by the IG Data policy standardisation and implementation. That of course raises questions such as: “What do other publishers and institutions publishing data think of these data policies?” “Should we expect adoptation, soon?” “Are there any modifications need to be done prior to adoptation? What are they and to whom do they apply?”

You can consult these standardised policies here and you can leave your comments expressing your own thoughts and questions to be answered on the IG’s RDA webpage!

Sincerely, 

Elli Papadopoulou