The Open Research Data (ORD) Action Plan specifies the measures of the ORD Strategy published in July 2021. It represents a further step for swissuniversities, the ETH Board, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) as well as the Academies of Arts and Sciences towards facilitating access to research data and thus Open Science.
Open Science is a paradigm that seeks to make scientific research, data, and their dissemination available to all levels of an enquiring society and the public. As a key element of Open Science, Open Research Data (ORD) facilitates access to and reuse of research data. This in turn promotes better, more effective research for the benefit of society as a whole. Through the principles of open access and reusability of research data, ORD practices support transparent and reproducible research findings. Moreover, ORD enhances collaboration, as ORD practices encourage researchers to share knowledge and findings across disciplines, legal systems, and borders, promoting creativity and innovation in the process.
The ORD Strategy published in July 2021 contains four objectives for the Swiss ORD landscape: The targeted development and support of ORD solutions based on the needs and ORD practices of the respective research communities, the strategic development and consolidation of infrastructures and services, the promotion of researchers’ ORD skills and sharing of best practices, as well as the development of systemic, supportive frameworks for institutions and research communities.
Four action areas have been defined in the ORD Action Plan to achieve these objectives. The Action Plan furthermore describes different action lines within the action areas. The action lines lie in the primary responsibility of one of the partner institutions, which implements them in coordination with the others. The Action Plan covers the years 2022 to 2028.
A key characteristic of the Action Plan is the participants’ common will for coordination, and thus for a collaborative approach. For this reason, a broad-based Strategy Council has been set up to provide strategic leadership for the ORD Action Plan. The Strategy Council consists of high-ranking representatives of the partner institutions and is tasked with ensuring cooperation during the implementation of ORD. The Strategy Council started its work at the beginning of 2022.
The Swiss ORD community will also be involved in the strategic development of ORD. Two sounding boards, consisting of researchers and service providers from the ERI institutions, provide decentralised support for the implementation of the ORD measures.
The ORD Action Plan is funded over two ERI periods. The latest version of the Action Plan contains the planned federal funding for implementing those measures scheduled from 2022 to 2024. The partner institutions use funds they have already budgeted for ORD, of which some are federal project contributions from the Open Science I programme. The Action Plan will be updated in the summer of 2022 for the 2025–2028 period on the basis of the partner organisations’ multi-year plans.
More information on the ORD Action Plan is available here.
More information on ORD in the ETH Domain is available here: ethrat.ch/en/eth-domain/open-research-data/
