Research Data Management: OpenAIRE National Workshop in Poland (2nd part)

The second part of the OpenAIRE National Open Access Workshop took place in Poland on November 25, 2020. The aim of the event was to discuss themes around institutional support for research data management. After the welcoming words from Jakub Szprot who is responsible for managing the work of the Open Science Platform at Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modelling (ICM UW), Natalia Gruenpeter presented the activities of the OpenAIRE National Open Access Desk and Wojciech Fenrich presented open data repositories developed and by ICM UW. 

Organizing research data management support 

After this introduction, the invited speakers took the floor for presentations of their experiences. Anna Wałek (Gdańsk University of Technology Library) discussed the activities of the Open Science Competence Center created in the framework of Bridge of Data project (MOST DANYCH project), Leszek Szafrański presented the research data management activities conducted at the Jagiellonian University and the role of the Jagiellonian University Repository, and Bożena Bednarek-Michalska described data management support for researchers at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Toruń.

Speakers mentioned some points relevant for all institutions in Poland:

• complying with open access mandates and requirements of research funding institutions, 
• developing infrastructure for storing and sharing research data, 
• building a team supporting researchers in data management and developing employees' competences in this area, 
• developing a support system for researchers and fitting it into the existing administrative support for researchers applying for grants, 
• engaging researchers with data management and creating effective training programmes.

Meeting funder's requirements

• the benefits of proper data management and open data sharing,
• the research data management planning, taking into account the subsequent stages of the project lifecycle,
• the criteria for evaluating research data management plans. 

In April, 2019 the National Science Centre announced plans to introduce open science policy, as well as the requirement for data management plan (DMP) and published guidelines for applicants to complete the DMP form in the proposal. In February 2020 members of the Council expressed their approval for a new open access policy to publications created as a result of research projects funded entirely or in part from NCN resources. The Open Access Policy was finally adopted by Order No 40/2020 of the Director of the National Science Centre of 31 May 2020. It was modelled on the postulates of Plan S but also included requirements regarding underlying research data related to the published articles: basic datasets should be placed in an open repository (see: Open Access Policy at NCN).