Putting an Open Research Data strategy into practice with your Research Information Management System

The past few years, driven by funder mandates, research data management (RDM) has taken increasingly center stage in the context of managing the research life cycle. There has been a rapid growth in the appetite for making research data publicly available. This has been triggered, in part, by mounting support for open science, concerns over research integrity, and the launch of initiatives such as the FAIR principles for RDM. In response, the number of open data repositories has risen sharply, along with open data requirements attached to research funding.

Many involved in the research ecosystem, from policy makers and funders to publishers and institutions, have adopted new research data guidelines and practices. While some welcome this greater transparency, for those tasked with their institution's research development, the shift to extend the research life cycle management to research data brings a unique set of challenges. For example, most researchers deposit their data outside their institutional data repository. Our analysis of RDM practices at 11 institutions suggests that up to 90 percent datasets are hosted on one of the many external general subject or domain-specific repositories.

In this presentation, we aim to provide further insights on this analysis and the team of a leading university will share their experiences with advancing RDM practices by leveraging their Research Information Management System and specialized RDM tools. They will shed light on how this has helped them shaping their strategic thinking throughout the research lifecycle. Participants will hear both about recent findings on the evolution of the research data landscape and as well as learn how to operationalize an Open Data strategy making use of their research development tools.