On the 9th of March 2018 SDU adopted an Open Science Policy for the university. On the 31st of October 2024 SDU reviewed the Policy which now consists of the following key statements:
-
Research data is recognised as a valuable resource and a Data Management Plan (DMP) is considered as an essential part of any major research project. The management of research data should reflect best practices, code of conduct, security considerations, ethical protocols (including confidentiality and privacy) in the respective field of research. It should follow the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles, comply to the National strategy for data management based on the FAIR principles, and adhere to the Danish Code of Conduct for Research Integrity.
-
Publications and relevant research data are made as open as it is sensible, to contribute to the advancement of science, to accelerate breakthroughs, to pave the way for new innovations that improve society, and to support research findings and transparency.
-
Information and research data are kept as closed as it is necessary, i.e. to respect copyrights, confidentiality agreements, contractual, legal (including GDPR), and ethical obligations or regulations, to protect future commercialization possibilities, and ensure that unwanted knowledge transfer affecting national security does not take place.
-
Appropriate formats are selected, and appropriate arrangements are made for the long-term preservation of scholarly output including research data adhering to project agreements.
-
SDU requires researchers to deposit the research data needed to validate the results presented in scientific publications in trusted repositories with information on how access can be gained. Research data should be provided with persistent identifiers and must be linked with publications where possible.
-
Research Data Management is recognized as a vital component of good scientific practice enabling trust in research.
-
All researchers are urged to create an Open Researcher and Contributor ID (ORCID) as well as to claim and update their appropriate researcher IDs and to connect them to Pure to increase the visibility, and recognition of their work.
-
The engagement of citizens in research (Citizen Science) for a more inclusive and participatory society better equipped to handle the profound transformations of the coming years is encouraged whenever this is feasible or makes sense for the project.
-
To assess quality of research and evaluate performance of researchers, SDU will compliment journal-based metrics with consideration of Open Science and additional relevant research activities as stated in the (CoARA) Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment.
The full SDU Open Science Policy is available here.
Open Science Policy at your department?
Since the implementation of the SDU Open Science Policy every department at SDU has made their own guidelines on how to follow the overall SDU Policy. These are commonly referred to as “Open Science guidelines” OR as a part of the “instructions for research” OR as “implementation of the Open Science policy”.
Talk with your department head to find out what the specific Open Science guidelines are for your research department.
Frequently asked questions
Open access (OA) refers to free, unrestricted online access to research outputs such as journal articles and books. OA content is open to all, with no access fees.
There are many types of OA, but the two main routes to making research outputs openly accessible are “Gold Open Access” and “Green Open Access”.
Gold OA involves publishing articles or books via the OA route on a publisher’s platform.
Green OA involves archiving a version of the manuscript in an OA repository, like SDU Pure.
Content published via the Gold OA route is accessible immediately on publication at the publisher’s website, but may come with a hefty fee. Manuscripts published via the Green OA route may, in many cases, be made accessible only once a self-archiving embargo period has elapsed. The terms for onward sharing and re-use of OA content will depend on the licence under which it has been made available. (Adapted from SpringerNature)
In cases where closed access cannot be avoided, please consider writing an OA popular science article or a blog post or engage in OA communication activities regarding your work.
To learn more, visit the FAQ section of our page on data best practices here or visit the Open Access webpage.
FAIR research data is data that has been prepared in accordance with the FAIR guiding principles published in 2016. These principles contain data management best practices that aim at making data FAIR: findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable.
To learn more, visit the FAQ section of our page on data best practices, here.
A data management plan (DMP) is a written document that describes the data you expect to acquire or generate during the course of a research project, how you will manage, describe, analyze, and store those data, and what mechanisms you will use at the end of your project to share and preserve your data.
You may have already considered some or all of these issues with regard to your research project, but writing them down helps you formalize the process, identify weaknesses in your plan, and provide you with a record of what you intend(ed) to do.
Data management is best addressed in the early stages of a research project, but it is never too late to develop a data management plan.
To learn more about the SDUB recommendations for preparing a DMP, visit our general research data management page, here.
ORCID provides a persistent digital identifier (an ORCID iD) that you own and control, and that distinguishes you from every other researcher.
You can connect your iD with your professional information — affiliations, grants, publications, peer review, and more – and have your newest publications automatically synced via SDU Pure.
You can use your iD to share your information with other systems, ensuring you get recognition for all your contributions, saving you time and hassle, and reducing the risk of errors.
The Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) is a collective of organisations committed to reforming the methods and processes by which research, researchers, and research organisations are evaluated. Current research assessment methods rely heavily on publication-based metrics such as citation counts, and often fail to recognise the wide array of contributions made by researchers.
Over 700 research organisations, funders, assessment authorities, professional societies, and their associations have agreed on a common direction and guiding principles to implement reform in the assessment of research, researchers, and research organisations, outlined in the Agreement on Reforming Research Assessment published in July 2022 which provides an outline for reform and implementation.
The Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) recognizes the need to improve the ways in which the outputs of scholarly research are evaluated.
The declaration was developed in 2012 during the Annual Meeting of the American Society for Cell Biology in San Francisco. It has become a worldwide initiative covering all scholarly disciplines and all key stakeholders including funders, publishers, professional societies, institutions, and researchers.
The objectives of DORA are to:
Raise awareness
To call attention to new tools and processes in research assessment and the responsible use of metrics that align with core academic values and promote consistency and transparency in decision-making
Facilitate implementation
To aid development of new policies and practices for hiring, promotion, and funding decisions
Catalyze change
To spread research assessment reform broadly by working across scholarly disciplines and globally
Improve equity
To call for broader representation of researchers in the design of research assessment practices that directly address the structural inequalities in academia
The so-called "Sorbonne Declaration" on research data rights affirms the commitment of the signatory universities to opening up research data and demanding a clear legal framework to regulate this sharing and to provide the means to put it in place.
The Declaration was published on January 28 2020 at the LERU website, and it is an important document to promote Open Data.