Open science round-up: October 2023 – International Science Council

“The October 2023 Open Science Roundup is dedicated to International Open Access Week, a yearly celebration endorsing open access (OA) to scholarly output and creating a more equitable knowledge society. This month, we hear from Ginny Hendricks from Crossref on Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs)”.

What Is A Repository For? – Building the Commons

“If you haven’t heard, in 2024 Humanities Commons will be launching a completely reimagined open-access repository. It’s currently under heavy construction. So we’ve been asking ourselves: Why does the Commons have a repository in the first place? At our heart we are a social network, a hub for scholarly exchange. Most of us don’t think “repository” when we think about social networks like Mastodon or Instagram or Facebook. So what exactly is a repository? And why will the new repository be so vital to the life of the Commons?…

How will the new Commons repository broadcast researchers’ work? Reaching an audience is partly about open access. This is not just a matter of letting visitors view the works on the repository site free-of-charge. It is also about letting other open access services and sites “re-broadcast” works from the Commons collection. So we will offer free access to the Commons repository in the formats that other tools and aggregators can use: a REST API, OAI-PMH streams, and (later on) the COAR Notify protocol. And we will embed data about each work in its repository page so that it is catalogued by services like Google Scholar. This extends the audience for members’ work far beyond the circle of people who visit the Commons….”

Research Organization Registry (ROR) | Case Study: Why ResearchEquals Integrated ROR and Live Streamed It

“Chris Hartgerink, the founder of Liberate Science, discusses why and how they integrated ROR into the modular publishing platform ResearchEquals for author affiliations in user profiles and Crossref DOIs and explains why they live streamed all eight hours of the work….”

Aligning data-sharing policies: Meeting the moment | Commentary and opinion | Features | PND

“To make data sharing easier and to establish a clear baseline for what well-considered data-sharing policies should encompass, we recommend that funders:

1. Clearly specify which data grantees are required to share. Do you want grantees to share only data underlying published studies or all data generated during the funded project? Do you want raw or pre-processed data? If qualitative (not just quantitative) data are also covered by your policy, do you provide guidance for grantees on good practices for sharing qualitative data?

2. Consider incorporating code- and software-sharing requirements as a necessary extension of their data-sharing policies. To be able to reproduce results accurately and build upon shared data, researchers must not only have access to the files but also the code and software used to open and analyze data. Only then are data truly findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. The ORFG and the Higher Education Leadership Initiative for Open Scholarship (HELIOS) have prepared a more detailed brief.

3. Clearly specify the required timing of data sharing. The timing will vary based on what data are to be shared and what constitutes the event that triggers the sharing requirement. If data underlie a published study, complying or aligning with new federal policies will require data to be shared immediately at the time of publication. If, however, the policy requires sharing of all data, then the timing may be tied to the award period (as the NIH requires).

4. Require grantees to deposit data in trusted public repositories that assign a persistent identifier (e.g., DOI), provide the necessary infrastructure to host and export quality metadata, implement strategies for long-term preservation, and otherwise meet the National Science and Technology Council’s Desirable Characteristics of Data Repositories. To make compliance easier for grantees, funders should provide a list of approved data repositories that meet these characteristics and are appropriate for the disciplines they fund.

5. Require grantees to share data under licenses that facilitate reuse. The recommended free culture license for data is the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0). The reasoning behind this is two-fold: first, data do not always incur copyright and, therefore, reserving certain rights under other licenses may be inappropriate, and second, we should avoid attribution or license stacking that may occur as datasets are remixed and reused. Other options include the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) or ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) licenses.

6. Strongly encourage grantees to share data according to established best practices. These include, but are not limited to: a) the FAIR Principles, which outline how to share data so they are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable; b) the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance, which emphasize the importance of Collective Benefit, Authority to Control, Responsibility, and Ethics in the context of Indigenous data, but could also inform the responsible management and sharing of data for other populations; and c) privacy rules, such as those provided under HIPAA. Funders should communicate that it is the responsibility of grantees to get the appropriate consent and ethical approval (e.g., from their institutional review board) that will allow them to collect and subsequently openly share de-identified data.

7. Allow grantees to include data sharing costs in their grant budgets. This could include costs associated with data management, curation, hosting, and long-term preservation. For many projects, data hosting costs will likely be minimal—several public repositories allow researchers to store significant amounts of data for free. For projects that will generate larger amounts of data, additional hosting costs can be budgeted. The most important cost may be the personnel time and expertise required to properly prepare data for sharing and reuse. Funders should consider increasing the allowable personnel costs to secure extra curation time for team

Africa PID Alliance | Persistent Identifiers – Helix Analytics Africa | est. 2023

“Africa PID Alliance is a project by Helix Analytics Africa and Training Centre in Communication (TCC-AFRICA), which, encompasses a community of PID enthusiasts in and from Africa aiming to lead and realize a FAIR sharing of access to data using Persistent Identifiers in innovation, research, and technology within the cultural, scientific and cross-industry ecosystems. We provide the following solutions to achieve robust PIDs Digital Object Identifiers (DOI); Personal Data Protection (Control & Compliance); Data Auditing & Reporting…”

Africa PID Alliance Digital Object Identifiers Registration Concept Note | May 11, 2023

Abstract: “Persistent Identifiers are the pillars of an interoperable, persistent and reliable Open Research Infrastructure. This is the reason why a lot of countries/regions and organizations took the initiative to contribute to this network and help promote the use of PIDs through their academic and publishing ecosystems.    The objective of this document is to structure the feasibility, implementation and manageability of the project. A survey on the African continental level will shed light on or provide insights on the need of a DOI Registration Agency tailored to the continental context. One of the innovations that this agency will bring is a specific prefix for Africa that will provide; Ownership to African researcher over their content…”

Nabil Ksibi, Joy Owango, & Sara. (2023). Africa PID Alliance Digital Object Identifiers Registration Concept Note (Version 1). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7924069

DOIs for Research Software: Increasing Visibility, Connectivity, Citability

“Research software are vital outputs of the research endeavour. They are often integral to the generation of research data, and rely heavily on the same technical and social infrastructure to disseminate, cultivate, and coordinate activities. While research software adhering to the same openness and FAIRness ideals as other digital objects should be per se intellegitur, it is only recently that efforts have been started to ensure they are afforded the same long-term preservation and stewardship as other research outputs. However, research software engineers are yet to view making their software FAIR and Open as normative and in their interests. The value of adding PIDs to research software to expose both citation metrics and their interconnections with other research entities is expected to increase researcher buy-in and drive change.

DataCite invites you to join us for a webinar in which you will learn about: – The importance of research software, and the difficulties faced in ensuring they are a first-class citizen of the research endeavour. – How DataCite supports research software, our recommended practices, and projects we are involved in with research software at the forefront. – A Zenodo–GitHub integration highlighting a practical use case of DataCite services for research software. – HERMES, a research software publication system currently in use that was developed by a German group including DataCite Members….”