Open Access and Research Data management: Horizon 2020 and Beyond in Ireland.

In April of this year University College Cork (UCC) hosted a 2-day training event focusing on Open Access Data in Horizon 2020. The event was sponsored by FOSTER and organized jointly by UCC Boole Library and Repository Network Ireland. Day one was aimed at researchers and others who were interested in developing Horizon 2020 proposals. The speakers on day one were

•    Martin Donnelly from the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) (Martin was unable to attend on the day so his presentation were taped in advance).
•    Joe Doyle, Intellectual Property Manager, Enterprise Ireland•    Jonathan Tedds, Senior Research Fellow, Department of Health Sciences, University of Leicester
•    Brian Clayton, Research Cloud Service Manager, UCC
•    Peter Mooney, Environmental Research Scientist, Environmental Protection Agency•    Evelyn Flanagan, Data Manager at the UCC Clinical Research Facility
The day gave attendees an overview of open data in Horizon 2020 (Martin Donnelly). Jonathan Tedds demonstrated how the work of his research team benefits from the use of open data. Joe Doyle from enterprise Ireland discussed intellectual property and how Open Access can benefit innovation.  In the afternoon Martin Donnelly gave a 2nd presentation on how to develop data management plans.  Finally there were 3 case studies. Brian Clayton, Peter Mooney & Evelyn  Flanagan all gave examples on how research data is currently being managed in Ireland.

Day two was aimed at support staff. People working in libraries, IT services, research offices and project staff.  Day two speakers were

•    Stuart McDonald, Research Data Management Service coordinator, University of Edinburgh•    David McElroy, Research Services Librarian at the University of East London,
•    Jonathan Greer Queens University Belfast•    Gareth Cole, Research Data Manager at Loughborough University and formerly of the University of Exeter
•    Julia Barrett, Research Services Manager, UCD Library
•    Louise Farragher, Information Specialist, Health Research Board
•    Dermot Frost, Research IT services at Trinity College Dublin

Day two mainly concentrated on examples of different Research Data management services. It became clear that there was no one size fits all solution. Indeed Jonathan Greer highlighted that it can be challenging to offer a service in such a complex area.  Day 2 provided a huge amount of material for discussion among the attendees and a recurring theme was given the size of our country collaborative research data management services could be provided for the whole country.  This was especially encouraging as all of us involved in digital preservation are aware that we need to prevent silo’s of information. Collaborative services have a successful tradition in Ireland. RIAN the Irish portal for Open Access publications harvests the individual repositories in Ireland. This allows individual institutions to own and manage their own repositories while still providing a central portal.

The two day event was a great success, introducing some people to the concept of Open Access and Open Data while also providing plenty of food for thought for those of us involved in the support of researchers and management of services and infrastructure.

All presentations can be found on the FOSTER website on the event page.