EUREMAP Data Management Plan

The EUREMAP project aims to optimise the marine bioprospecting workflow within the European research community, enabling state-of-the-art research and enhanced capacity for academia and industry. This will be achieved by building upon the existing expertise available within the consortium members (EU-OPENSCREEN, EMBL, EMBRC, ELIXIR) to synergise capacities and resources to enhance marine bioprospecting for natural products. The EUREMAP platform to be developed will consist of a new multidisciplinary marine bioprospecting workflow that integrates the existing technical capacities, thereby increasing the competitiveness of marine natural products in drug discovery and strengthening the blue bioeconomy in line with the European blue growth strategy. The functioning EUREMAP marine bioprospecting workflow will support the discovery of novel bioactive natural products from marine organisms by utilising novel technology to improve the capacity of European Research infrastructures (RIs).

The multidisciplinary nature of the marine bioprospecting research space necessarily requires integrating data flows between disparate research fields. As such, while data management components within disciplines may be in place, they may not be adequately formulated to provide the basis for a cohesive and integrated data workflow. Consequently, the current Data Management Plan (DMP) is a living document that is continuously revised as the project proceeds, and the envisaged marine bioprospecting workflow is clarified and finalised. The DMP distinguishes internally produced project data (e.g. deliverables, meeting notes, agendas, etc.) and the data directly applicable to the functioning of the final workflow in production (e.g. sample metadata, DNA sequence data, liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS), etc.). Because the marine bioprospecting workflow is seen as having multiple entry and exit points, data management practices must be aligned between adjoining workflow technical components and service providers. The first draft of the DMP circumscribes the proposed data management practices based on an initial interpretation of results gathered from the beneficiaries in a “Survey of current data management practices” (M11.1). The survey results will ultimately provide the basis for the Deliverables 11.2 Status of the EUREMAP Open Science policy and 12.1 Data Interoperability Roadmap. At all stages of the project and throughout the implementation of the marine bioprospecting workflow, Open Science practices will be adhered to, and FAIR data practices will be followed whenever possible, subject to the requirements implied by ethically and commercially sensitive data.