National strategy for data management based on FAIR principles (2021)

Research creates results that can be utilised by society to address both global and national challenges. The ongoing digitalisation means that research results can be shared and used more quickly and easily. Research data can be used and reused by other researchers, and results can be reproduced for comparison of results. This promotes more effective and better research, and it increases confidence in the research conducted.

The European Commission has launched a number of policy and strategic initiatives aimed at supporting better research and societal use of research data, including the European Open Science Cloud, the object of which is to establish a Web of FAIR data and services to facilitate finding and reusing research data. In 2018, the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation published a Strategy for National Cooperation on Digital Research Infrastructure. This data management strategy—based on the FAIR principles—is an important initiative in the 2018 strategy and should be seen as a first Danish national response to the requirements of the European Open Data Directive the (PSI Directive) that national policies must be drawn up for making research data accessible in accordance with the FAIR principles.

In order to preserve research data and make them available to others, it is necessary to keep track of the contents and physical location of the individual data sets throughout the research process. This is known as data management. To ensure that data can be found, accessed, interoperated and reused, they must comply with the FAIR (Findable,Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) principles. The purpose of this strategy is to ensure that research data generated via public funds—and possibly co-funded by private research-funding foundations—meet the FAIR principles.

The target group for this strategy is researchers and management at Danish universities, preservation institutions which support research, and other institutions that conduct research using public grants. The strategy lays down a number of principles and identifies actions and initiatives aimed at advancing the process towards a successful implementation of the strategy, including the development of practices for how research data are handled.

The strategy includes many different research areas and institutions. An open approach is therefore needed where not everyone is expected to be able to use the same solution and not everyone can proceed at the same speed. This will require resources, which must be found in an interaction between the institutions and the research-funding foundations. 

This strategy has been prepared by DeiC on assignment from the Danish Agency for Science, Technology and Innovation, and it is the result of a wide collaboration, including contributions from many relevant stakeholders and individuals. More than 700 comments and proposals for the draft strategy were received in connection with the consultation process alone. We are looking forward to following the next steps on the road towards a national implementation of data management based on the FAIR principles at Danish research institutions.