Research Data Policy

The research data policy provides guidance on the management of the digital research data produced, used and edited in FMI's research projects. This policy applies to FMI as an institute as well as all the individual researchers, meeting the relevant legislation and the national and EU guidelines to the rules on the open access to the Scientific Publications and Research data.

FMI defines "research data" as digital information, in particular facts or numbers, collected to be examined and considered as a basis for reasoning, discussion, or calculation. In a research context, examples of data include statistics, results of experiments, measurements, observations, modelling, resulting from fieldwork, survey results, interview recordings, images, retrieval algorithms, data assimilation techniques and models as well as other objects directly related to the research data - metadata, tools, software, platforms, services (2). This policy covers all the research data fully or partially acquired and/or created by FMI or FMI's personnel.

The policy will be regularly updated to ensure it keeps pace with the scientific requirements, data management best practices, and follows the general international science community principles and national regulations of research data.

FMI promotes open research data

• FMI strategic goal is to promote open science (FMI Strategy 2025).

• FMI promotes the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-usable) principles (3) for research data, in line with the requirements of several research funding organizations that call for open and systematic research data management.

• Research data produced with national public funding are considered open and FMI will make its research data available for others to use if there is no legal, ethical, contractual or other reason to restrict it.

FMI follows good data management practices

• FMI is committed to supporting good data management throughout the data life cycle. Good data management is systematical, based on common practices (REF on FMI research data management guideline), includes the research data and the related metadata, (tools, platforms, services) and takes into account the national and international requirements regarding data life-cycle management.

• FMI produces also research data that are accessible via the international data centers. Existing practices, e.g. distribution and storing the research data in the international data centers will continue.

Means to implement open research data and management

Access

• All the research data held by FMI are openly available to any person or organization;

• Research data may have ethical, confidential, intellectual property, funder and legal restrictions attached to it and this should be established and explicitly mentioned.

• If any limitation or restrictions on access apply (legal, ethical, contractual, security or other reason), it will be listed and guidance to apply for access will be given;

• FMI will allow its researchers to work, process and publish the data they have collected before being made open. This period should be no longer than 2 years, if contractually allowed, from the end of data collection;

• The FMl's research data are free of charge. However, FMI may apply charges in case of complex requests or tools where additional work is needed or where third-party license conditions require to make specific charges. In these cases, FMl's standard terms will be applied.

• All the FMl's research data will be accompanied by a data license;

• All persons or organizations that use the data provided by FMI are required to acknowledge the originator(s) of the data.

Responsibilities

• All FMl's researchers are engaged to follow the good data management principles in accordance with FMl's research data guidelines, good scientific and ethical practices, national and international legislation, and research funding organizations' requirements.

• Researchers are responsible for collecting the data, performing needed quality assurance, adding the metadata descriptions, including other documentation if needed, and submitting the research data to FM l's research data management system.

• The Principal investigator (PI) of the research project is responsible for following the FMl's research data policy and ensuring that the project's research data management is in line with contractual and funders' requirements and, if possible, with FMl's research data policy.

• All research publications based on FMI research data will include a statement (link) on how the data can be accessed.

• FMI will provide a research data management system, which will include the capacity for research data storage, metadata descriptions, data processing, data discovery and sharing, and data preservation.

• Every dataset that is (deposited and) made accessible at FMI will be given a specific type of persistent identifier (PID) (such as a Digital Object Identifier (DOI)) to help ensuring correct citation of the data. In addition, every researcher is encouraged to obtain an identifier (ORCID ID, ResearcherlD) for a more efficient connection with their research contributions.

• FMI will provide guiding and expert support for research data management.

Ownership of the data and IPR

• By virtue of law (4), the ownership of all the software and data closely connected to the software produced in order to execute one's employment contract as well as data collected by FMl's resources gathered in order to fulfill one's duties as FM l's employee is transferred to FMI.

• Situations where the ownership of the data will have to be agreed separately may occur.

• If the data are produced under grant or contract, the terms of agreement determine the ownership and rights to exploit the data. In this case, the agreement supersedes the present policy.

• FMI will always comply with the provisions of law in force.

• Principal investigators are responsible for establishing contracts on the ownership and user rights of research data at as early stage as possible or, if possible, before the beginning of the research project.

• In case of FMI data ownership, the originator of the data will be attributed.

• If PI moves to another institution together with his/her project, the ownership of the (subsequent) data will be negotiated between FMI and PI's new institution (5).

Data lifetime

• FMI supports long-term preservation of research data. FMI seeks possible national and international solutions for long term preservations.