The recent launch of the Global Risks Report from the World Economic Forum outlined the importance of cooperation when trying to solve problems that are inherently global in nature. The report warned however that the willingness for such cooperation was dwindling as states entered a dog-eat-dog mindset.
A new report from UK academia suggests the key to global problems is not just global cooperation per se, but specifically open data. The report, which was penned by the Open Research Data Task Force, which itself is a group of senior professors from higher education, highlights how open research data significantly increases the likelihood that science will be able to infer patterns and identify solutions in complex problems.
The road to open data
The report makes a number of recommendations to help society move towards an open data landscape. For instance, they believe a number of steps could be taken to better incentivize open data whilst also removing barriers, including:
- All stakeholders act to strengthen the incentives for researchers to create and use open research data
- Funders and research organisations establish training programmes for researchers in data management, analysis and stewardship
- Research organisations strengthen the provision of specialist support services within research organisations, and increase capacity in data stewardship, research software and data science.
Active leadership:
UK Research and Innovation takes a co-ordinating role in overseeing the development of ORD policies, infrastructure and services, including:
- Shared understandings of roles and responsibilities
- Distribution of resources – Engagement with international and non-academic stakeholders
- Development of guidelines and protocols on ORD
- Establishing the evidence base and monitoring trends and progress towards ORD
Clear expectations:
- Funders, research organisations and publishers establish clear expectations on preservation of data and software, including the repositories to be used
- UKRI leads an effort to promote greater harmonisation of funder ORD policies, based on the FAIR principles and with a view to research data being ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’
- Publishers and learned societies take steps to require data access statements, support open citation of data and facilitate data deposit and linking to other outputs
User-friendly services:
- Research organisations and funders take steps to ensure that all researchers have access to user-friendly services, both generic and domain-specific
- Research organisations and funders develop, with support from Jisc, a set of principles for negotiation with commercial providers of ORD infrastructure to maximise interoperability, retain data ownership and reduce the risk of ‘lock-in’
- UKRI ensures the development of sustainable ORD infrastructure features prominently in its long-term research and innovation infrastructure roadmap, with relevant needs to be identified in close consultation with learned societies and subject communities
- Research organisations and funders take active steps to sustain and strengthen UK participation in international ORD services and initiatives
Sustainable funding:
- UKRI and other stakeholders work together to review the costs, business and funding models of current data services
- All funders require existing, funded data services to develop appropriate plans for ORD
- UKRI, funders and research organisations review levels of funding for ORD to ensure these remain appropriate to an increasingly data-rich research landscape
- UKRI and other funders consider the provision of funds to fill priority gaps, support data publishing, and make existing data readily usable in support of national research and innovation priorities
