Developing a Research Data Policy Framework for All Journals and Publishers

An RDA Europe 4.0 funded CODATA Data Science Journal publication in the RDA special collection

RDA Europe 4.0 funds the publication of up to 30 articles of the CODATA Data Science Journal special collection, with the aim to gather and promote research results and outcomes stemming from the Research Data Alliance activities. In particular, it collects high quality papers describing the latest results of RDA working groups (WGs) or interest groups (IGs) focusing particularly on use cases that highlight the added value of the RDA solutions for different challenges related to research data sharing and management. 

In this series RDA Europe 4.0 highlights the articles peer reviewed and published in the DSJ special collection on RDA.  RDA community members Iain Hrynaszkiewicz ,  Natasha Simons,  Azhar Hussain, Rebecca Grant,  Simon Goudie published the practice paper “Developing a Research Data Policy Framework for All Journals and Publishers”. 

The practice paper on Developing a Research Data Policy Framework for All Journals and Publishers

An output of the Data policy standardisation and implementation Interest Group (IG) of the Research Data Alliance (RDA). 

More journals and publishers – and funding agencies and institutions – are introducing research data policies. But as the prevalence of policies increases, there is potential to confuse researchers and support staff with numerous or conflicting policy requirements. We define and describe 14 features of journal research data policies and arrange these into a set of six standard policy types or tiers, which can be adopted by journals and publishers to promote data sharing in a way that encourages good practice and is appropriate for their audience’s perceived needs. Policy features include coverage of topics such as data citation, data repositories, data availability statements, data standards and formats, and peer review of research data. These policy features and types have been created by reviewing the policies of multiple scholarly publishers, which collectively publish more than 10,000 journals, and through discussions and consensus building with multiple stakeholders in research data policy via the Data Policy Standardisation and Implementation Interest Group of the Research Data Alliance. 

Implementation guidelines for the standard research data policies for journals and publishers are also provided, along with template policy texts which can be implemented by journals in their Information for Authors and publishing workflows. We conclude with a call for collaboration across the scholarly publishing and wider research community to drive further implementation and adoption of consistent research data policies. Read the full paper >>

Submit your paper

RDA Europe 4.0 still has funds to pay your Article Processing Charges (APC) the Call for Papers is open till 17 July, but hurry, as we work on a first come first served basis.  This Call for Papers is open to all interested applicants regardless of their geographical provenance. More information about the call and submission process here.

Submit your paper here: https://datascience.codata.org/about/submissions/