Vai al contenuto / Skip to main content
University of Padua
University Library System
University Library System
ITA

Open Research Data

Research data means data collected, observed or created to be analyzed and to produce the original results of research. Data can come in different forms: measurements, images, text files, audio files, program files, etc.

The management of research data is a very complex activity. Still, if it is set up correctly from the beginning, it can make publishing a research work and a degree or doctoral thesis much easier.

Open Data @ Unipd Leaflet

 

The University of Padua Policy and European Union Requirements

The European Commission, as well as other funding bodies, requires that those who had access to funding (Horizon 2020, Horizon Europe, ERC, MSC) make peer-reviewed scientific publications reporting the results of the research projects available to Open Access.
It also requires that the data generated during the research process and necessary to validate the results presented in a scientific publication (underlying data) are deposited in a research data repository and made available with the fewest possible restrictions.

In 2018 the Academic Senate of the University of Padua issued the "Policy on the management of research data", recognizing that "research data constitute the heritage of the university institution, as well as a resource — even in the long term — for research, university teaching and the progress of society".

Policy on the management of research data

 

DMP - Data Management Plan

At the beginning of a project, even before starting to create or collect data, it is necessary to plan how they will be managed: where they will be stored, with which software they will be processed, the solution to any privacy issues, who owns the rights, who can access them, and if and how they can be reused: the collection of all this information constitutes a Data Management Plan (DMP).

The guidelines of the European funding programs provide that grant winners, in addition to making documents available to Open Access, must also fill in a DMP to be shown within the first 6 months from the beginning of the research activity.
Any reasons that prevent the data or part of the data from being made accessible (confidentiality, security, intellectual property, etc.) must be justified in writing.

How to fill in the Data Management Plan?

There are numerous tools, sites and documents available to researchers to create or verify the contents of their DMP through checklists:

Estimating costs for managing research data

Some funding bodies or institutions foresee that to qualify for a grant, the DMP reports, among other things, an estimate of the costs related to the management, sharing and reuse of the data generated during the project. These costs should be indicated in the Data Management Plan (DMP) as an integral part of the grant application.

To facilitate the researcher or researcher in estimating the costs of managing data in a research project, OpenAIRE has developed a helpful tool:
Estimating costs RDM tool.

For more information on how to estimate the management costs of the data produced or collected during a research project, please refer to the specific pages on the OpenAIRE website.

 

Where to store research data

If the funding body does not indicate the data repository in which to archive research data, it is possible to use the disciplinary repository most frequently used by the research community or the archive of the institution to which the researcher belongs.

The University of Padua makes available to staff Research Data Unipd, the data repository for archiving and storing datasets generated or collected during a research project.
Research Data Unipd responds to the characteristics of a FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data archive, as required by the European Commission in the Guidelines on FAIR Data Management in Horizon 2020.

Research Data Unipd

Video guide to the deposit into Research Data Unipd

Phaidra, the platform for the management and archiving of digital collections, is also available at the University.

Research Data Unipd and Phaidra are indexed in the most important Open Access archives international registries: re3data.org, OpenDOAR, and FAIRsharing.org. Research Data Unipd is a content provider of OpenAIRE.

Researchers can deposit both documents and research data also in Zenodo, the interdisciplinary repository of CERN created in the context of the European OpenAIRE project.

 

Insights

 

Library Helpline

If you need any further information, please contact the Library Helpline. Select:

  • "Supporto alla pubblicazione accademica" (Scholarly publishing support)
  • "Consulenza tematiche diritto d’autore" (Copyright support)
  • "Supporto Open Science (Open Access, Open Data)" (Open Science support)
Keywords
Open Data DMP Data Management Plan Research Data Unipd