Impact of Social Sciences – A new high-level policy analysis sheds more light on Europe’s open data and open science policies

"A collaboration between the Digital Curation Center and SPARC Europe, the Analysis of Open Data and Open Science Policies in Europe report published in May. The report analyses national policies on research data management throughout Europe. Here, Martin Donnelly shares some of the findings. A majority of policies were owned by or heavily involved national research funders, laying out expectations or requirements for grant recipients. Active policies are split between those where research data is covered alongside open access or open science and those where it is considered in isolation, with a similar split between those countries adopting hard (imperative) or soft (encouraging) approaches. Many policies cite work carried out in the UK; though it remains to be seen how much Brexit will curb this influence."