Belmont Forum Data Accessibility Statement Policy and Template - Endorsed 18 October 2018

The DAS policy and statement has been explicitly co-developed by the Belmont Forum and science publishing community to complement the Data and Digital Outputs Management Plan (DDOMP) requirements being incorporated into all future Belmont Forum Collaborative Research Actions (CRAs) or funding calls. The DDOMP is designed to provide Belmont Forum grantees a framework for practicing good management of transnational and transdisciplinary data throughout their research projects, from the pre-proposal stage to its conclusion. By linking the language and expectations of the DDOMP with the DP3 initiative, funders and publishers will articulate a coherent set of data and research outputs management expectations for researchers, with the ultimate result of improved sharing and re-use of research data

The DAS document is concentrating chiefly on delivering a set of template Data Accessibility Statements (DASs) for guiding  Belmont Forum grantees when publishing their research results. The DAS is included as part of a journal article and articulates which data underlie a paper, where the data are available and under what conditions they can be accessed.

The DAS encourages researchers to plan for the longevity, reusability, and stability of the data attached to their research publications and results. Access to data promotes reproducibility, prevents fraud and thereby builds trust in the research outcomes based on those data amongst decision- and policy-makers, in addition to the wider scientific community and the general public. Even when the underlying dataset cannot be open (for example, for confidentiality, conservation or security reasons), good machine readable metadata and information about the data’s licensing restrictions are important. Furthermore, by supporting data citation, the DAS also provides opportunities to credit the data collectors and curators.