Read the National Pilot Interview from the Netherlands and explore all the progress of OSTrails pilot studies. Check the latest on their national activities and learn how they’re progressing with the integration of open science and research assessment. This month we had the pleasure of discussing with Eileen Waegemaekers from SURF and Andrew Hoffman from CWTS/CADS at Leiden University. Enjoy!

 - Eileen Waegemaekers

 - Andrew Hoffman

"To successfully innovate in research data management, open science, and open research information requires the ongoing alignment between the ecosystem of tooling and infrastructure on the one hand, and the values and practices of heterogeneous stakeholder groups and end-users on the other. Through a thriving collaboration between data stewards, open research information and research IT experts, and researchers themselves, the Dutch national pilot on OSTrails aims to confront this challenge head-on. Our project is well-positioned to inform pathways for the wider uptake and interoperability of machine actionable data management plans – both here in the Netherlands, and across the European landscape – and we’re pleased to also be able to learn from the many other colleagues who are contributing to this important initiative."

-Can you briefly introduce your organisation? How does it/do they contribute to EOSC?

Formally, the Dutch national pilot (N-3) is a collaboration between SURF, the collaborative organization for research and education IT in the Netherlands, and the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), an academic research center in the Faculty of Social Sciences at Leiden University – with support from the Dutch Research Council (NWO), one of the main research sponsors in the Netherlands. Since receiving the initial news last year that the OSTrails project as a whole had been funded, the project consortium has already expanded significantly and now includes several Dutch universities and universities of applied sciences: Leiden University, TU Delft, Utrecht University, VU Amsterdam, and Saxion University of Applied Sciences (with the latter also acting as an interface with the many other universities of applied sciences in the Netherlands.) Our pilot critically depends upon –and deeply benefits from the participation and insights of– an engaged and committed group of stakeholders from these organizations, who bring a wealth of expertise in the areas of research data and software management, open science, open research information, research infrastructure and ICT, and research policy and evaluation. SURF, CWTS, and the NWO all actively participate in EOSC initiatives, which further fosters continuous dialogue and collaboration within the EOSC community, and with constituencies across the Dutch research landscape.

-What are you most excited about in OSTrails? What are you looking forward to?

One thing we’re really excited about is simply deepening the collaborative relationships within this stellar national consortium, particularly as we explore the affordances of maDMPs for planning and assessing scientific knowledge production, and for tracking the circulation, sharing, and reuse of research data and outputs, be they text-based, tabular, or otherwise. Additionally, beyond our commitment to hosting the more ‘generalist’ funder- and RPO-specific DMP templates on maDMP tooling platforms, we’re also stoked to start experimenting with developing domain-specific templates and guidance for (machine-actionable) data management plans. We created this deliverable based on the needs of the different research communities –including those that trade in more non-traditional research outputs (NTROs)– with whom many of our consortium members actively engage on a daily basis in their work as Data Stewards. More broadly, one of the coolest things about our involvement in the OSTrails consortium is that it enables us to better understand, test, and even contribute to shaping the state of the science in machine actionable data management planning –both in terms of tooling as well as the standards that underlie it.

-How is planning, tracking and assessing research being realised in your country/scientific domain?

In the Netherlands, most RPOs now have clear policies that require researchers to create DMPs, and many organizations employ one or many research data management experts who are available to provide guidance and feedback on drafting DMPs. In this sense, research planning is generally left to individual researchers, and typically happens in consultation with Data Steward or similarly qualified personnel. 

As far as tracking and assessing research outputs is concerned, this is not currently standardized across institutions. Most Dutch RPOs do not have clear follow-up policies or corresponding infrastructure to track whether materials that were identified in the planning phase have ultimately been deposited in the designated (or in any) repository, for example, nor do RPOs systematically assess whether the outputs in question adhere to the FAIR principles. With our involvement in OSTrails, we aim to elucidate and potentially address these gaps in future Dutch research policy developments, and SURF in particular has the ambition to develop an SKG that can be used for monitoring at the national level –although this initiative is still at an early stage. 

-What is your pilot about? Can you provide some details on the main actors, services and priorities? How will the results of OSTrails be adopted by your pilot?

The main goal of our pilot is to learn from and contribute to innovations in research data management, open science, and open research information beyond the status. We do this through experimenting with –and sensibly implementing– novel approaches to research data management planning. 

Our first three deliverables are more research- and data stewardship-facing and include encoding existing funder- and RPO-specific DMP templates in maDMP platforms; developing novel domain-specific templates and guidance and testing these against existing evaluative criteria and rubrics; and, wherever possible, embedding FAIR Implementation Profiles into maDMP templates. The latter three deliverables are slightly more technical in scope, and include ‘PID’-ifying maDMP templates, which means mapping relevant fields of maDMP templates (e.g., where grant information about a project is documented) to existing persistent identifiers (e.g. Grant-ID); using these PIDs as a means of interoperating maDMPs with local CRIS systems, and eventually to interoperate maDMPs with the OpenAIRE graph such that we can extend the graph with (PIDs of) data management plans drafted by researchers in the Netherlands.

Our key stakeholders include data stewards, librarians, IT support personnel, service providers, and of course researchers themselves! Above all, we are driven by a commitment to ensuring that maDMPs are usable by and meaningful for researchers, Data Stewards, and other stakeholders; that they contribute to recognizing and rewarding the efforts that researchers invest in open science practices; and that they simultaneously enable the efficient exchange of research information with other components of the open research information ecosystem.

-Ongoing activities and Next Steps?  

In the context of the national pilot, we’ve just hosted a successful workshop at SURF Research Day called ‘What’s behind the Data Management Plan of the future?’ where we gathered over 50 research data management and research IT stakeholders from Dutch RPOs to collectively brainstorm answers to this question. It was super inspiring to see so many colleagues show up and share their ideas, which will feed directly into our national pilot. From here, we’re now in the process of setting up two working groups – one focused on the initial launch/trialing of one (or multiple) maDMP platforms, and a second on exploring common questions across RPO-specific DMP templates. We’re also planning pilot interviews to explore researcher needs for domain-specific templates and associated guidance, which we’ll be starting in Fall 2024. Finally, concerning the wider OSTrails project, we’re keen on engaging in discussions about establishing core/common (meta)data from/about DMPs that can be publicly exposed in science knowledge graphs, even in situations where the full text of the DMP cannot be published (e.g., for privacy or security reasons).

Thank you both!

Read the National Pilot Interview from Poland and explore all the progress of OSTrails pilot studies. Check the latest on their national activities and learn how they’re progressing with the integration of open science and research assessment. This month we had the pleasure of discussing with Jakub Szprot (ICM), Raimundas Tuminauskas (PSNC) and Raul Palma (PSNC). Enjoy!

 - Raimundas Tuminauskas 

  - Jakub Szprot

  - Raul Palma

"OSTrails national pilot for Poland constitutes the natural development of the Open Science landscape in the country, including research communities as well as policy makers and funding bodies. DMPs are currently part of the national policy for research projects. Integrating with the services like ROHub as well as national repositories, OSTrails national pilot, and especially machine-actionable data management plans is seen as important next step of the evolution of the research data lifecycle."

-Can you briefly introduce your organization(s)? How does it/do they contribute to EOSC? 

PSNC is an internationally renowned node of the European Research Area,  operating advanced e-Infrastructure and continuously expanding its activity as an R&D center in ICT. It has been contributing to different projects and initiatives aiming to support researchers in the adoption of FAIR and Open Science principles. PSNC has a strong involvement in EOSC and has participated in several recent and ongoing related projects and activities such as EOSC Future, cs3mesh4eosc, AI4EOSC, EOSC DIH, Skills4EOSC, OSTrails, and coordinated the RELIANCE project (InfraEOSC07). Moreover, PSNC is responsible for 2 out of the 3 lots implementing the EOSC EU node. PSNC is an EOSC service provider and member of the EOSC association, and its representatives have contributed to various task forces and working groups including the AAI and semantic interoperability task forces, the Research Product Publishing Framework WG, and contributed to the EOSC horizontal services report, VA assessment, and supported various EOSC tripartite events. Related to FAIR and Open Science, PSNC members have contributed to the conception and implementation of the research object concept, and the latest RO-Crate specification, which provides a straightforward and lightweight implementation of FDOs that are part of the long-term vision of EOSC. PSNC onboarded the reference research object management platform ROHub in EOSC, which integrates several other EOSC services including ARGOS, OpenAIRE SKG, and FAIROs assessment services, and supported various EOSC DIH pilots and bi-lateral collaborations with other service providers leveraging PSNC related services.

ICM, the HPC and data center at the University of Warsaw, has been developing comprehensive open science solutions for Poland and Europe for many years. It builds infrastructure and software for open science, operates nationwide services for open access to scientific publications and research data, and offers education and training in open science and research data management. Additionally, ICM actively participates in expert groups at the national, European, and international levels. It coordinates the University of Warsaw’s activities regarding participation in the EOSC Association and it has participated in many EOSC-related projects - recently in OpenAIRE Nexus, FAIRCORE4EOSC, EOSC Future, SciLake, CRAFT-OA, and EOSC Beyond. As a member of the Open Science Agora Consortium, ICM will be involved in providing professionally managed services for the core components of the EOSC EU Node, including functions such as the Web Portal Front Office, the Resource Catalogues and Registry Services, the Application Workflow Management engine, the Federated Identity Management and Single-Sign-On solution, the Monitoring and Accounting function, and the overall Service Management System and service integration. 

-What excites you the most about OSTrails? What are you looking forward to the most?

We look forward to supporting the creation and maintenance of machine-actionable Data Management Plans (maDMPs) by integrating ROHub with DMP platforms, SKGs, FAIR assessment tools, and national data repositories. This integration aims to assist researchers in Poland in managing their DMPs and related resources in accordance with FAIR principles.

ROHub has already integrated with the ARGOS DMP platform, enabling the creation of research objects from DMPs. It is also connected to the OpenAIRE SKG, providing metadata about RO-Crate research objects and other resources such as data cubes and Jupyter notebooks. Additionally, ROHub incorporates FAIROs, a FAIR assessment service for evaluating research objects and their aggregated resources. Building on this, in OSTrails, we plan to extend these integrations to automate the creation of maDMPs based on RO-Crates. We aim to use standard interfaces to connect with other DMP platforms and FAIR assessment tools, and to expose richer metadata about resources to SKGs. Moreover, in OSTrails, ROHub will connect with national data repositories managed by ICM to leverage existing resources. Additionally, the integration with the national funding agency's system for DMP reporting will be enhanced to simplify researchers' tasks. We’re also looking forward to using FAIR assessment tools and platforms to improve the quality of research data in national data repositories. 

-How is planning, tracking and assessing research being realised in your country and scientific domain? 

Aiming at improving research quality and making science more impactful, the National Science Centre (NCN), the national funding agency in Poland, has implemented an Open Access Policy as of May 2020. Effective for agreements signed from January 2021, this policy applies to projects from calls initiated on or after June 2020 and aligns with Plan S principles endorsed by the NCN in 2018.

Based on the guidelines of Science Europe, NCN included a Data Management Plan (DMP) in its application forms and published a set of instructions on how to fill out the DMP. The plan is assessed by experts at the proposal review stage. The DMP can change during the implementation of the project. The NCN does not need to be notified of all the changes as they happen. The relevant information, however, should be included, along with a justification, at the end of the project report, which will undergo expert assessment.

-What is your pilot about? Can you provide some details on the main actors, services and priorities? How will the results of OSTrails be adopted by your pilot? 

The goal of the pilot is to support the creation and maintenance of executable DMPs in Poland. The main actors involved in its implementation include PSNC, ICM and the national funding agency NCN. Potentially other national research repository providers may be involved.  PSNC brings RO-Crates and the supporting platform ROHub for the management of maDMPs. ICM brings various research data repositories including RepOD, RDS, and MX-RDR. NCN is the entity defining the requirements of DMPs at the national level. The tasks for OSTrails encompass several key objectives. First, to define DMP requirements specific to Poland's research ecosystem. Next, to establish and manage connections in machine-readable formats using RO-Crates. This includes integrating associated datasets, resources (such as code and publications), and contextual entities (like individuals, organizations, and funding sources) using Persistent Identifiers (PIDs), as well as enhancing the integration between ARGOS and ROHub. Another significant task is enabling the FAIR assessment of DMP resources through RO-Crates. This will involve enhancing the FAIROs-ROHub integration to evaluate the fairness of RO-Crates and their aggregated resources effectively. OSTrails also focuses on improving integration and interoperability with national DMP platforms via RO-Crates. This includes refining the process for generating DMP reports to ensure accuracy and relevance. Lastly, integrating these functionalities into the broader framework of OSTrails will ensure comprehensive support for researchers in managing their data effectively and in compliance with FAIR principles. The results of OSTrails will be used to extend and standardise the integration of DMP tools, SKGs and FAIR assessment tools with RO-Crates and national and international data repositories. 

-How does the next day of OSTrails project look like in your country/scientific domain?  

In the future, the researchers will be able to create their DMPs, and then manage and evolve them along with all the related resources via RO-Crates, including not only the possibility to assess their FAIRness, leveraging and contributing to SKGs, but also enabling the possibility to reuse and reproduce results associated. Additionally, the reporting of DMPs to national funding agencies will be simplified, if not automized, based on the management of the research lifecycle via RO-Crates.

Thank you!