University Research Data Management Policy update

Where did the last five years go? Oxford Research Data Management policy was last updated five years ago, and so work has been going on over the summer to consult with stakeholders and draft an updated policy.

We all know that research at Oxford generates publications, but increasingly the underlying data is becoming a crucial research output as well. Keeping and sharing research data helps demonstrate reproducibility, it enables data science and it enhances our academic profile through the rising importance of data journals.

On this occasion, the changes to the policy (described below) were less extensive than in 2018, but nonetheless important. 

Recent policy updates

Research and Innovation Committee recently reviewed and approved updates to the University’s Research Data Management policy.

Key changes to the policy include:

• A new University commitment to ensure that access to research data is as open as possible and as closed as necessary in line with the Concordat on Open Research Data and the UKRI Common Principles on Research Data
• More explicit reference to the widely-accepted FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) Principles which describe how data should be organised to be more easily accessible, understood, exchangeable and reusable
• Increased emphasis on the benefits to researchers of data sharing
• Specifying that external data repositories used for Oxford-associated data must support ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) and DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers)
• Encouraging researchers to create Data Management Plans and provide Data Availability Statements

The updated policy is available on the Research Data Oxford website.