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Open Research Data - the FAIRest Data is the Future of Science - Estonia national OpenAIRE event

Open Research Data - the FAIRest Data is the Future of Science - Estonia national OpenAIRE event

Estonian OpenAIRE national event 2017: international seminar „Open Research Data - the FAIRest Data is the Future of Science

 
The University of Tartu Library and DataCite Estonia Consortium organized an international seminar on the 20th of April, 2017 held in the Tallinn University of Technology.
The goal of the seminar was to bring out best practices from various data archives, show common problems of data storing and usage as well as to explore researchers’ point of view to the data.
The event was opened by prof. Renno Veinthal Vice-Rector of Research of Tallinn University of Technology who admitted that in general researchers are not having an open attitude towards open access publications but also that they receive conflicting demands and messages about open science.

Keynote speech was delivered by prof. Carol Tenopir who introduced her two different research: 2015 PLOS ONE scientists survey that shows why Research Data Services are needed and LIBER 2016 research data services in European libraries: current offerings and plans for the future. Carol Tenopir is a Chancellor’s Professor at the School of Information Sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and the Director of Research for the College of Communication and Information, and Director of the Center for Information and Communication Studies. Key points of her presentation: almost half researchers do not use any metadata standards to describe their data; over 80% of researchers are willing to share at least some of their data; 75% of researchers agree that lack of access to data is a major impediment to progress in science
 
Another invited speaker came from Sweden: Urban Ericsson. Urban Ericsson  is working as a repository manager for the DiVA consortia (44 members) in Sweden. DiVA (http://www.diva-portal.org) is a publishing system for research and student theses and a digital archive for long-term preservation of publications. From last year it is also possible to publish research data in DiVA.
Two other international speakers came from Lithuania. First presenter was Vaidas Morkevicius who introduced Lithuanian SSH Data Archive for storing social sciences’ data. According to Vaidas Morkevicius it is not librarians’ job to archive data or create metadata for data, but rather to publish and make it available.
The second presenter from Lithuania was dr. Žibutė Petrauskienė from Vilnius University Library who gave an overview of MIDAS - Lithuanian national data archive and its functionalities.
Maksim Mišin from the University of Tartu Library showed a new user interface of University of Tartu’s data repository DataDOI and gave an overview of library’s work with research data.
Arko Olesk from Tallinn University in Estonia gave first results of A Survey of Open Science Attitudes and Practices among Estonian Scientists which was conducted in spring 2017. Key points: most researchers are happy with their current set-up, even though they mostly store their data in personal devices; most of them believe that other scientists would be interested in their data; they believe that Open Access could be most useful to improve possibilities to train students and new researchers. Their attitude towards not publishing in OA: lack of funding; reputation and quality of OA journals; prevalence of OA journals in their field.
This survey was another step toward Estonian national open science policy. Next steps will include: focus group interviews among stakeholders; roadmap for open science in Estonia; and collecting perspectives of potential users.
Aleksei Kelli from the University of Tartu brought out various legal aspects that are connected to open data in digital society, including three typs of barriers: state, regional and international (regulatory, infrastructure and data sharing models), organizational (lack of support) and  individual(lack of motivation).
In order to see researchers’ point of view to research data, next three presenters were active scientists representing social sciences and humanities. Mare Ainsaar (University of Tartu) brought out that in theory open research data in social sciences has great principles; however it lacks „carrots“. Liina Lindström (University of Tartu) asked what really data is when it comes to humanities and how can it be archived and shared? Rein Murakas (University of Tartu) shared his experience in sharing social science data internationally and talked about problems what have occurred.
Liisi Lembinen from the University of Tartu Library (Estonian OpenAIRE NOAD) gave an overview of OpenAIRE possibilities for researchers and funders.
Event had various breaks scheduled for networking and already in advance draw great interest. In total the small room could hardly accommodate 82 people and live stream and recording of the event has drawn over 292 additional viewers. Event’s website which includes program can be found here.  Recording of the seminar is available from https://youtu.be/loiX3q60Y-E and presentations in University of Tartu repository DSpace.
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