Digital Research Data Sharing and Management (December 2011)

A report from the Task Force on Data Policies, Committee on Strategy and Budget, National Science Board. Excerpt: "The Board is committed to the development, implementation, and assessment of policies that promote efficient management of, and broad access to, digital research data that result from NSF-funded activities. This commitment includes sharing of results, data, physical collections, and other supporting materials created or gathered in the course of NSF-funded research. Policies that ensure efficient management and broad access are critically important to NSF as it carries out its mission to promote the progress of science and engineering. The Board, in taking up this topic, strongly encourages NSF to seize the opportunity to exercise national and international leadership to promote sharing and management of digital research data for the benefit of the science and engineering community and society....[Principles:] Investigators are expected to share with other researchers, at no more than incremental cost and within a reasonable time, the primary data, samples, physical collections and other supporting materials created or gathered in the course of work under NSF grants....Investigators and grantees are encouraged to share software and inventions created under the grant....Openness and transparency are critical to continued scientific and engineering progress and to building public trust in the nation’s scientific enterprise. This applies to all materials necessary for verification, replication and interpretation of results and claims, associated with scientific and engineering research....Open Data sharing is closely linked to Open Access publishing and they should be considered in concert. This principle is included because there need to be bidirectional pointers between peerreviewed and other published literature and the available supporting materials...."