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 2016 stated an ambition that “research data underlying scientific publications should be openly accessible at the time of publication”. In 2017, VR was assigned by the government to coordinate national efforts to implement open access to research data. In the Research Bill of 2020, the Government stated “Regarding research data, the transision [to an Open Science system] shall be fully completed latest by 2026, which implies that research data is made available as open as possible and as closed as necessary”.
In 2021, the (UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science)[https://www.unesco.org/en/open-science/about] was published. 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.
On behalf of the Swedish government, the National Library of Sweden (Kungliga biblioteket, KB) developed national guidelines for open science in 2024.
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 and Formas are demanding Data Management Plans for grants.
Universities are starting to establish research data policies that calls for public access to publicly funded data, and the adherence to the FAIR principles. List of current research data policies from Swedish universities.
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, European Commission Expert Group on FAIR Data