Interoperability

The University of Bristol has elaborated brief but complete guidelines to anticipate data management costs in a research project, so that these can be included in research funding applications. The guideline provides approximated costs of different activities at different stages of the research data lifecycle.

The University of Ghent summarises all the RDM requirements per funder and grouped into four categories: during proposal stage, post-award data management plan, covering data management costs and data sharing and/or preservation requirements.

The University of Bath has elaborated a page with UKRI and other major funder requirements, together with university policy requirements and national relevant legislation. For each funder, information is given in a set of harmonized sections: providing a DMP, recovering data management costs, providing data access statements, data sharing and data retention.

Radboud University has created a spreadsheet which lists the journals (and respective publisher) where their affiliated researchers publish more frequently. For each publisher a categorized list of data availability requirements is given (e.g. “Obligatory”, “Encouraged”, “Upon request”, “Optional as supplementary material”). In the spreadsheet, a link to the publisher’s policy page for additional details is provided.

The University of Bristol has compiled a curated list of funders’ requirements. They have opted for a standardized checklist of requirements, which covers aspects such as whether a DMP is required during the application, whether a repository is recommended by the funder, whether the compliance of the policy is monitored or not, what is the minimum preservation timeframe required, etc. For each of the funder, an extensive document with specific guidelines has been created.

The University of Bochum groups all the funder and journal policies in a succinct page which provides links to external resources where guidelines are provided in detail.

Radboud University provides an extensive guideline on how to obtain and register informed consent, with specific recommendations depending on how consent is obtained (paper-based, online form or oral), what the content of informed consent procedures should be and how to store them. Besides, examples and sample documents are provided to facilitate the process for researchers.

Utrecht University has developed a video tutorial with tips and resources to find existing data. It guides the viewer through different repositories and shows how to use them. The video is embedded in a page where the main advantages of reusing data are summarised and a list of potential repositories and data sources is compiled, in addition to those provided in the video.

The University of Oxford has developed a research integrity checklist which compiles all the different requirements set by applicable legislation (e.g. GDPR), the University regulation, domain specific codes as well as project-specific requirements (e.g. research involving animals, overseas-based research, etc.). The checklist is meant to be used at the start of the research to ensure compliance, but also as a tool “to engage in a broader dialogue about research integrity and good practice in research”.