Members
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Ana Alice Baptista
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Tom Cramer
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Peter Akerele
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Veronika Stoka
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Gita Rozenberga
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Carmel Wallis
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Group Details

  • Status: Recognised and Endorsed
  • Group Focus: Policy, Legal Compliance, and Capacity

Introduction

Research data policies aim to increase the availability of research data and in some cases, FAIR research data. The number of organisations with data policies – and number of researchers affected by them – is increasing. These organisations include scholarly publishers, research funders, and research institutions. Since 2013 there has been much growth in journal and publisher policies in particular, which was in part a response to emerging policy requirements for data sharing and data management by funders. 

The Interest Group (IG) was established in 2017 to support research data policy implementation and, where appropriate, standardisation, with an assumption that reducing complexity and improving consistency of research data policies of journals will benefit research, researchers, funders and institution. Its scope covers research data policies of all relevant stakeholders, but has focused primarily on journal and publisher policies. Between 2017 and 2020 the IG developed, via Plenary and ad hoc meetings and online community consultation, a research data policy framework that could be adopted by all journals and publishers (Ref: http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2020-017). This framework has been published after peer review and cited more than 50 times, and endorsed as an RDA supported output. Since 2020 the IG has explored the potential for policy standardisation and implementation among funding agencies and increased compatibility of data policies across funders and publishers. This work has been conducted in collaboration with other RDA groups and external groups representing publishers and funding agencies. Alongside this we have continued to promote research data policy implementation among publishers, and identified barriers to implementing effective policies via a 2023 workshop on DAS quality, as well as potential solutions to overcome such barriers. The group membership has grown to nearly 250 individuals, representing publishers, research infrastructures, government agencies, libraries, funders, research performing organisations and others. 

The research data policy space is continuing to grow and diversify to consider more nuanced community, discipline, regional, stakeholder, and other context specific-requirements. As well as a diversity of policy needs there is a diversity of policy goals for different organisations – such as (but not limited to): increasing data availability; data reuse; data discovery; data quality; compliance; research integrity and reproducibility; researcher recognition; cultural change. Different goals may require different policy designs and approaches, and we see a need to provide a global forum for those working on research data policy to come together to share ideas, evidence, promote collaboration, and to further progress on effective research data policies.

User scenario(s) or use case(s) the IG wishes to address

  • Organisations seeking expertise or information to inform their choices about research data policy design, implementation and evaluation;
  • Organisations seeking feedback on their design, implementation or evaluation of research data policies;
  • Individuals or organisations seeking collaborations to research the design, implementation or effects of research data policies;
  • Individuals or organisations seeking collaborations to implement research data policies or make improvements to existing policies;
  • Individuals or organisations seeking to share best practice and exchange knowledge on the design, implementation or evaluation of research data policies.

Objectives

At the highest level, our objective is to:

  • Increase the findability, accessibility, interoperability and (re-)usability (i.e. FAIRness) of research data by promoting the development and implementation of research data policies that enable measurable progress towards this goal.

More specifically our objectives for the IG are to:

  • Provide a forum for discussion and collaboration on the development, implementation and evaluation of research data policies for all interested stakeholders including individuals and organisations (funders, publishers, research institutions, researchers, infrastructure, service providers, etc.);
  • Connect policy related activities and Working Groups within the RDA;
  • Connect individuals and organisations with interest in research data policy
  • Share experience and expertise and enable new research, initiatives and collaborations that advance research data policy development and impact evaluation.

Participation

The most relevant RDA groups are:

Relevant initiatives outside the RDA where a liaison is already established, or will be established include:

Outcomes

Through our revised charter and objectives we anticipate outcomes to include but not be limited to:

  • New working groups may be initiated from meetings or activities or ideas discussed in the group.
  • Growth of active IG membership.
  • Increased visibility of non-publisher stakeholders and discipline/ community specific initiatives.
  • More evidence-informed approaches to data policy development and implementation.
  • A community-curated library of initiatives, guidance and research related to policy development. 

Mechanism

Our IG will host sessions and joint sessions at RDA Plenary meetings, to invite individuals, groups and organisations to participate in presentations, discussions and workshops to support our objectives. We will also organise online meetings / calls with our IG membership and the wider community to explore time-bound initiatives in more depth. The IG co-chairs will continue to meet approximately once every 3 months to monitor progress and achievement of objectives of the group, and strategize about how to achieve them.

Co-Chairs

  • Natasha Simons, Australian Research Data Commons
  • Kate McKellar, Wiley
  • Rebecca Grant, F1000
  • Dagmar Meyer, European Research Council Executive Agency
  • Iain Hrynaszkiewicz, PLOS (group proposer/founder)

Past Co-Chairs

  • Kate McKellar, Wiley (2022-2026)
  • Azhar Hussain, Jisc (2018-2022)
  • David Kernohan, Jisc (2017-2018)
  • Simone Taylor (2017-2018)
  • Simon Goudie, Wiley (2018-2023)