In Singapore, data sharing and open data may be new or unheard of to many people. However, related requirements are getting more common in US, UK and Australia and may hit us in a matter of time. In fact, open access mandates on publications from NTU and A*STAR did eventually arrive a few years after similar requirements in other countries. According to the December 2013 release of the EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020: Guidelines on Data Management, it says that,
“A further new element in Horizon 2020 is the use of Data Management Plans (DMPs) detailing what data the project will generate, whether and how it will be exploited or made accessible for verification and re-use, and how it will be curated and preserved. The use of a Data Management Plan is required for projects participating in the Open Research Data Pilot. Other projects are invited to submit a Data Management Plan if relevant for their planned research.”
In addition, the same report says,
“Regarding the digital research data generated in the action (‘data’), the beneficiaries must:
(a) deposit in a research data repository and take measures to make it possible for third parties to access, mine, exploit, reproduce and disseminate — free of charge for any user — the following:
(i) the data, including associated metadata, needed to validate the results presented in scientific publications as soon as possible; (ii) other data, including associated metadata, as specified and within the deadlines laid down in the data management plan (see Annex I);”
The NTU Libraries Scholarly Communication Group is working with relevant NTU parties on the NTU’s version of DMP requirements.
We are currently actively looking for NTU researchers who would like to collaborate with us to investigate how we could prepare our NTU infrastructure and services to enable the making of NTU researchers’ data available to others. If you can’t wait to know more about it or or might have suggestions, contact Ms Goh Su Nee (email: sunee@ntu.edu.sg) or Mr Cheng Wei Yeow (email: WYCheng@ntu.edu.sg). We would love to get in touch with you. Just drop us an email today!
