SURF Research Day 2024

There are many ideas about what’s behind a Data Management Plan (DMP). One idea is that it’s simply a place for researchers to document how they’re going to make their research outputs ‘open’ and ‘FAIR.’ And while central to supporting open and FAIR research, in most cases, DMPs are not themselves FAIR: once completed, they’re hard filed by the appropriate party and seldom revisited. Proponents of so-called machine actionable Data Management Plans (maDMPs) argue that there should be more behind a DMP, and that we should be developing infrastructure and standards that enable the exchange of information contained in DMPs across different systems. This promises to facilitate the reuse of research information by myriad stakeholders, and across scales – from those wishing to understand their institution’s local data storage needs to others who are monitoring the global uptake of open science practices. In this workshop, we ask: What’s behind the DMP of today, and what could the emergence of maDMPs mean for the Dutch research ecosystem going forward? During several speed rounds, attendees will share their ideas about whether maDMPs might better address research performing organizations’ data management needs; how they might more effectively support researchers’ domain-specific data management practices; and whether they should include other research outputs, beyond data itself. The results of this session will inform an ongoing national pilot project – part of a larger Horizon-funded European initiative called OStrails – that is studying the usability, implementation, and domain-specificity of maDMPs, as well as their interoperability with Science Knowledge Graphs.