Requirements of Funding Organisations in Relation to Open Data

Many funding organisations now support the publication of research data, as long as this is not barred by data protection regulations, for example. Research funding organisations sometimes also fund the expenses that are accrued by the research data management in projects.

European level

In its funding programmes such as Horizon Europe, the European Commission requires a data management plan. For the Horizon Europe programme, the data must be handled in accordance with the FAIR principles.

You can view a summary of the requirements of other funding organisations on the website of Forschungsdaten.info under Funder Guidelines, with a focus on the DACH countries (Germany, Austria and Switzerland).

Germany

In Germany the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) has published an “Action plan on research data” (German) owing to the high significance of research data. The German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft/DFG) has published guidelines (PDF) on the handling of research data and offers, among other things, a checklist and FAQs on its page “Handling of Research Data“. The RatSWD has published a guide for applicants and assessors on the fundamental issues of modern research data management in the social sciences, behavioural sciences and economics called “Basic information on research data management – a guide to applying for and assessing data-generated and data-using research projects”, which can be downloaded from the DFG website (German, PDF). You can also download “Management of research data: What the ‘economics’ review board 112 expects from applicants?”  (PDF). For example, you can apply to the DFG for project-specific expenses that you incur when ensuring that your research data can be reused by third parties. These include staff expenses for preparing or transferring data in existing repositories. Usage fees, membership fees and costs that are incurred when using established infrastructures may also be funded. You can outline and apply for the costs in individual or joint projects under the rubric “other costs”. You are however expected to finance costs that primarily serve to fulfil good scientific practice, such as the archiving of published results in local IT structures, from your basic funding.

On the information platform open-access.network you can find an overview of the positions of politics regarding Open Access and research data.

Tip: On the Data management plan web page  of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, you can find sample data management plans for different research funding institutions and their requirementss.