The UOC is creating an interdisciplinary group to manage research data

The UOC has implemented actions to allow the research data generated in various projects to be managed and published with open access, in accordance with the guidelines of the Horizon 2020 programme and other calls for public funding that require this. The aim is not only to allow open access to the results of the projects, but also to the extensive documentation and data generated while the scientific research is being conducted.

The European Community defines the research data, subject to use and re-use, as the factual and numeric information compiled as the basis of reasoning, discussion or calculation: statistics, results of experiments, measures and observations generated by field studies, surveys or interviews and images.

During 2016, a pilot plan was implemented with two projects, PERFORM and TeSLA, and a web section was created compiling the existing internal information. The vice president Marta Aymerich presented these preliminary findings to the Spanish universities' research congress celebrated in Vigo in early December.

Now the UOC is going one step further with the creation of the interdisciplinary group, which in 2017 will develop an institutional policy of open access to research data, in addition to analysing current technology solutions that could be incorporated within its research groups and services themselves; and to plan the creation of an integral support service for the management of research data. The plan is to present the progress made by the group at the International Open Access Week in October 2017, and for the service to be developed throughout 2018.

The group will report its work to the UOC's Research and Innovation Committee, and is made up of Maria Canudas (Legal Office and Knowledge Transfer and Research Support Office [OSRT]), Francesc March (Projects and Applications) and Gràcia Puigdevall (OSRT), coordinated by Rosa Padrós (Library and Learning Resources).