At RDA P17, the Research Funders and Stakeholders on Open Research and Data Management and Practices IG, the Data Policy Standardisation and Implementation IG, and the FAIRshairing WG held a joint session about their collaborative project on funder-publisher research data policy alignment. The project includes three phases: 

1. Research and Analysis

In this phase, the team will conduct research into funder-publisher policy alignment, specifically related to data availability statements, data management plans, and encouraging/requiring the use of specific data repositories. 

2. Recommendations to Improve Policy Alignment

In this phase, the team will engage stakeholders to discuss phase 1 findings and develop recommendations to improve policy alignment.  Recommendations will be developed through an iterative process of community input and review. 

3. Application of Recommendations

In this phase, the teams will disseminate the recommendations and explore the use of the recommendations as a basis for continued policy alignment. FAIRsharing will put these templates into action, making these (harmonized) policies discoverable,comparable and FAIR.

The session at P17 updated participants on phase 1 findings to date, proposed activities and stakeholders to engage for phase 2, and provided an opportunity for the RDA community to discuss and give input into the project. The discussion produced three key takeaways:

1. While the deliverables of the project are sound, the rationale for the project, current status of policy (mis)alignment, and the evidence base supporting the project could be stronger.  

2. The evidence base could reveal additional policy features to consider (i.e., beyond data availability statements, DMPs and preferred repositories).

3. The project should engage other stakeholders for their input on the issue, specifically data repositories and researchers, alongside other stakeholders such as research infrastructures and institutional data services (e.g., data librarians). 

The proposed session has been developed with each of these points in mind. The objective of the session will be to improve our understanding of policy (mis)alignment and to explore which policy features we should investigate, with stakeholder input, before advancing the project. To do this, we will hear perspectives on data policy challenges, benefits, and drivers (e.g., promotion of reproducibility, meet researcher/reader needs, etc.) from a funder representative, a publisher representative, and (responding to feedback from P17) a repository representative/data librarian and a researcher. These presentations will be followed by a Q&A and discussion on incorporating their insights into the project.

Collaborative session notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1m0mPgLCA_RuX3kEpZ_Ub3VIKF2XdRW-IMe6-9GyF1iI/edit?usp=sharing

• Introduction

  • Overview of Project – Jeremy Geelen (CIHR)

• Rationale 

  • The rationale for funder-publisher policy alignment – Catriona McCallum (Hindawi)

• Issues of Misalignment 

  • Researcher perspective – Ralitsa Madsen (UCL Cancer Institute)

  • Editor perspective – Myles Axton (Wiley)

  • Funder perspective – Jeremy Geelen (CIHR)

• Funder Policies and Opportunities for Alignment

  • Comparing Funder and Publisher Research Data Policies: An Analysis – Joris van Rossum (STM Association)

• Q&A and discussion 

The session will be of interest to funders, publishers, researchers, research administrators, librarians and data stewards, and anyone with an interest in open science policy.  The session will be of interest to members of various RDA groups, including:

• CODATA IG on institutional strategies

• Machine-readable DMPs

• National Data Services

• Exposing DMPs WG

• Active DMP IG

• DMP Common Standards WG