Open data

One of the perceived ways to achieve optimal reuse is to make data FAIR:

• Findable: you can easily find it.
• Accessible: that it can be accessed.
• Interoperable: that it can "talk" to applications or workflows.
• Re-usable: you can reuse it.

The FAIR principles emphasise the ability of IT systems to find, access, interoperate and reuse data with minimal or no human intervention.

Publicly funded projects, whether from the European Commission or the Spanish Goverment, will have to develop a Data Management Plan that ensures compliance with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) in relation to research data, which will have to be published openly by default.

The Data Management Plan or DMP is a formal document that describes the data that is generated or collected during the life of a project and outlines the strategies for managing it during its execution and also after its completion (collection, processing, archiving, preservation and publication).

The URL participates in the eina DMP tool, developed by the Consortium of University Services of Catalonia (CSUC), which enables the Plan to be drawn up quickly, easily and collaboratively.

It contains different templates depending on the funding body and there is also a specific one if you are doing your doctoral thesis.

Regarding the publication of open data in a repository, the URL participates in the Repositori de Dades de Recerca from the Catalan Open Reseach Area (CORA), which is the trusted repository specifically for research data from Catalan universities and CERCA centres.

The metadata published in RDR are indexed in Google Dataset Search, DataCite Search, OpenAIRE and Mendeley Data, and comply with FAIR principles.

The data are published in open access through datasets consisting of the research data file(s), a persistent identifier, a description of the formats used, descriptive metadata about the data, the readme file and, if necessary, other contextual documentation.

The readme file is a plain text file organised in blocks. The URL has templates of this file available to its research community, containing information between brackets as well as indications on the level of obligatory nature of each section.

Consult the information on how to register in the Repositori de Dades de Recerca (CORA's Research Data Repository).