Due to the increasing costs associated with modern research and the pressures funders find themselves under, they have now began to introduce conditions on grants that require funded research teams to provide free, legal, and open access to their project datasets. In the same way that funders have traditionally seen publications (e.g. journal articles) as necessarily open research outputs they are now seeing datasets in the same way. A list of funder policies regarding research datasets is listed below. For each, a snippet of the policy, embodying the spirit of the policy is included. Please note, this list is not exhaustive and it is imperative you are aware of any and all Open Access/FAIR data requirements attached to funding awarded. Failure to meet funder mandates can result in withholding of payments attached to that award and suspension from applying for future funding.
Sherpa/JULIET is a searchable database of funder policies. Funder policies change regularly and it is advised their websites are consulted routinely.
"The HRB is committed to ensuring that its funded research is open, accessible and usable, so it can have the greatest possible impact."
"In the EU, the public sector is one of the most data-intensive sectors. Thus it holds vast amounts of data, known as public sector information (PSI). ‘Open’ public data are PSI that can be readily and widely accessible and re-used, sometimes under non-restrictive conditions.
Public sector information, sometimes also referred to as government data, refers to all the information that public bodies produce, collect or pay for. Examples are geographical information, statistics, weather data, data from publicly funded research projects and digitised books from libraries. The European Commission's policies focus on generating value for the economy and society through the re-use of this type of data."
"Science Foundation Ireland supports that research data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR)*. Appropriate data management and data sharing are fundamental to all stages of the research process and support high quality, reproducible research. As such, access to research data arising in whole or in part from SFI funding should be as open as possible."