Category Archives: Policy

Research data management policy resources

Publisher Policies

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Although it is usually funder policies which are seen to push the research data management (RDM) agenda, a number of publishers also have data policies. Three of these policies are identified below:

PLOS: PLOS state in their policy that “PLOS journals require authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception”. At the point of submission authors must provide a Data Availability Statement. They strongly recommend that the data is deposited in a repository.

Royal Society: The Royal Society Open Data Policy states that “it is a condition of publication that authors make available the data and research materials supporting the results in the article”. Similarly to PLOS, all manuscripts submitted to Royal Society journals should contain a Data Accessibility Statement which states where the supporting data can be accessed.

Nature Group: Nature Group policy states that “authors are required to make materials, data, code, and associated protocols promptly available to readers without undue qualifications“. Supporting data must also be made available to editors and peer-reviewers at the time of submission.

If your data is covered by a commercial agreement or cannot be released under the Data Protection Act then you will not be expected to make that data public. However, as with funder policies you should make efforts to release as much of your data as possible and/or practicable.

If you wish to publish data in Loughborough’s data repository please contact rdm@lboro.ac.uk.

EPSRC Data Expectations

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Today (1st May 2015) is the day when Universities have to be compliant with the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council’s (EPSRC) data expectations. At Loughborough we have been working towards being compliant for the past 18 months or so.

These expectations require Loughborough to securely preserve data created by EPSRC funded researchers for at least 10 years. Metadata about any data created should also be public within 12 months of the data being generated. In addition, any article based on RCUK (including EPSRC) funded research should include a statement saying where the supporting data can be accessed.

Earlier this week our repository for archiving research data was launched. It can be found here: https://lboro.figshare.com/. As can be seen, the repository is based on figshare’s figshare for institutions offering and we have been working very closely with them to create a Loughborough instance to both preserve and highlight the research data created by Loughborough’s researchers. The back end archival storage is provided by Arkivum.

The repository has already been populated with the data from PLoS articles written by Loughborough researchers.

We have held a couple of workshops already and over the next few weeks and months we will be holding sessions where researchers and other interested parties (Librarians, Research Office staff etc.) can come and find out more about the repository and research data management (RDM) in more detail. The next two are currently planned for 13th May and 26th June. If you wish to attend you can contact me for more information.

The repository is only one part of our offering. I was recently appointed (March 2015) as Research Data Manager to help support Loughborough’s RDM offerings and we will soon be updating and expanding our webpages with more information and advice on RDM matters.

In the meantime, if you wish to find out more, or wish to deposit data in the repository, please do contact me (Gareth Cole) on g.j.cole@lboro.ac.uk. We have also set up a general email address in case I am out of the office. This address is rdm@lboro.ac.uk.

Research Committee approve draft Research Data Policy

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Loughborough University’s Research Committee have approved a draft Research Data Management Policy. The policy is likely to be amended as services are developed and as it is considered at other committees. However, Research Committee approval is a good first step for this developing policy.

We would like to acknowledge the support we received from colleagues at the Digital Curation Centre, University of Edinburgh and University of Oxford in creating our draft policy.

RCUK Data Policies

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Research Councils UK have devised Common Principles on Data Policy. This establishes their position on the management of research data produced by projects they fund, as well as taking steps to making data publically available.

Each Council has slightly different requirements in relation to proposals for funding and the research data arising from the projects they fund. The Digital Curation Centre have pulled together a useful summary table together with information on funders’ data policies. See their Overview of funders’ data policies web page for further details.

Research data management policy creation

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We have a draft research data management policy progressing through various working groups and then on to committees at the University. However, we could not have reached this stage without the support of staff from the Digital Curation Centre. They gave a workshop where they advised us on the points our policy should cover and directed us to appropriate policies of other universities.

The starting point was to consider RCUK’s common principles on data and how we might align our research data management policy to these principles. We then looked at examples of research data management policies from other universities. We were particularly impressed with the University of Edinburgh’s research data management policy and this provided the starting point for our own policy. Talking through this policy and  others we realised that it was possible to separate policy statements and stakeholder responsibilities. This is exactly what the University of Oxford have done in their policy on the management of research data and records. So, we have incorporated elements of this policy too.