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Papers by Daniel Spichtinger

Open research Europe, Feb 21, 2022

Background: Data Management Plans (DMPs) are at the heart of many research funder requirements fo... more Background: Data Management Plans (DMPs) are at the heart of many research funder requirements for data management and open data, including the EU's Framework Programme for Research and Innovation, Horizon 2020. This article provides a summary of the findings of the DMP Use Case study, conducted as part of OpenAIRE Advance. Methods: As part of the study we created a vetted collection of over 800 Horizon 2020 DMPs. Primarily, however, we report the results of qualitative interviews and a quantitative survey on the experience of Horizon 2020 projects with DMPs. Results & Conclusions: We find that a significant number of projects had to develop a DMP for the first time in the context of Horizon 2020, which points to the importance of funder requirements in spreading good data management practices. In total, 82% of survey respondents found DMPs useful or partially useful, beyond them being "just" an European Commission (EC) requirement. DMPs are most prominently developed within a project's Management Work Package. Templates were considered important, with 40% of respondents using the EC/European Research Council template. However, some argue for a more tailor-made approach. The most frequent source for support with DMPs were other project partners, but many beneficiaries did not receive any support at all. A number of survey respondents and interviewees therefore ask for a dedicated contact point at the EC, which could take the form of an EC Data Management Helpdesk, akin to the IP helpdesk. If DMPs are published, they are most often made available on the project website, which, however, is often taken offline after the project ends. There is therefore a need to further raise awareness on the importance of using repositories to ensure preservation and curation of DMPs. The study identifies IP and licensing arrangements for DMPs as promising areas for further Open Peer Review Approval Status 1 2 3 version 2 (revision)

PLOS ONE, Aug 18, 2022

Considerable resources are being invested in strategies to facilitate the sharing of data across ... more Considerable resources are being invested in strategies to facilitate the sharing of data across domains, with the aim of addressing inefficiencies and biases in scientific research and unlocking potential for science-based innovation. Still, we know too little about what determines whether scientific researchers actually make use of the unprecedented volume of data being shared. This study characterizes the factors influencing researcher data reuse in terms of their relationship to a specific research project, and introduces subjectification as the mechanism by which these influencing factors are activated. Based on our analysis of semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of 24 data reusers and intermediaries, we find that while both project-independent and project-dependent factors may have a direct effect on a single instance of data reuse, they have an indirect effect on recurring data reuse as mediated by subjectification. We integrate our findings into a model of recurring data reuse behavior that presents subjectification as the mechanism by which influencing factors are activated in a propensity to engage in data reuse. Our findings hold scientific implications for the theorization of researcher data reuse, as well as practical implications around the role of settings for subjectification in bringing about and sustaining changes in researcher behavior.

International Journal of Digital Curation, Sep 20, 2022

As policies, good practices and mandates on research data management evolve, more emphasis has be... more As policies, good practices and mandates on research data management evolve, more emphasis has been put on the licencing of data, which allows potential reusers to quickly identify what they can do with the data in question. In this paper I analyse a pre-existing collection of 840 Horizon 2020 public data management plans (DMPs) to determine which ones mention Creative Commons (CC) licences and among those that do, which licence types are being used. I find that 36% of DMPs mention Creative Commons and, among those, a number of different approaches towards licencing exist (overall policy per project, licencing decisions per dataset, licencing decisions per partner, licensing decision per data format, licensing decision per perceived stakeholder interest), often clad in rather vague language with CC licences being "recommended" or "suggested". Some DMPs also "kick the can further down the road" by mentioning that "a" CC licence will be used, but not specifying which one. However, among those DMPs that do mention specific CC licences, a clear favourite emerges: the CC-BY licence, which accounts for half of the total mentions. The fact that 64% of DMPs did not mention Creative Commons at all is an indication for the need for further training and awareness raising on data management in general and licencing in particular in Horizon Europe. For those DMPs that do mention specific licences, almost 60% would be compliant with Horizon Europe requirements (CC-BY or CC0). However, it should be carefully monitored whether content similar to the 40% that is currently licenced with non-Horizon Europe compliant licences will in the future move to CC-BY or CC0 or whether such content will simply be kept fully closed by projects (by invoking the "as open as possible, as close as necessary" principle), which would be an unintended and potentially damaging consequence of the policy.

Geo: Geography And Environment, Mar 23, 2015

If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination... more If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.

Mitteilungen der Vereinigung Österreichischer Bibliothekarinnen & Bibliothekare, Oct 4, 2019

Als ich 2012 bei der europäischen Kommission in der Generaldirektion Forschung meinen Dienst als ... more Als ich 2012 bei der europäischen Kommission in der Generaldirektion Forschung meinen Dienst als Policy Officer antrat, wurde ich in den ersten Monaten nach meinem Betätigungsfeld gefragt. Nachdem ich angegeben hatte, dass ich für Open Access zuständig sei, kam die Gegenfrage "Und was machen Sie sonst noch?" Anders als noch vor 7 Jahren sind Open Access, Open Data und Open Science keine Randthemen mehr, sondern wichtige Bestandteile nationaler, europäischer und internationaler Forschungspolitik. Dieses sogenannte "Mainstreaming" ist größtenteils positiv zu sehen, hat aber auch Schattenseiten, wie Prof. Tal Yarkoni in seinem Blog-Beitrag "I hate open science" 1 darstellt. Er kritisiert, dass der Terminus "Open Science" mittlerweile von vielen verschiedenen Stakeholdern mit unterschiedlichen Bedeutungen verwendet wird. So sehen sich z.B. sowohl der große Wissenschaftsverlag Elsevier 2 als auch dessen KritikerInnen, wie der Paläontologe Jon Tennant 3 , als UnterstützerInnen von Open Science. Auch wenn es also unterschiedliche Interpretationen des Begriffes gibt, lässt sich feststellen, dass zumindest einige Bestandteile von Open Science, wie Open Access zu wissenschaftlichen Forschungspublikation oder Open Data, auf der Ebene der Politik mittlerweile in vielen EU-Staaten verankert sind, was sich auch in den Anforderungen von nationalen und internationalen Forschungsförderungseinrichtungen an Förderneh-merInnen (in Österreich wie z.B. des FWF 4) niederschlägt. Während also Open Access und Open Data bzw. Datenmanagement immer mehr in die Drittmittelförderung integriert werden, ist die Implementierung an Universitäten im deutschsprachigen Raum noch recht uneinheitlich. So kommt eine Analyse der OA-Policies von 47 deutschen

Springer eBooks, 2015

Data is becoming increasingly important for all aspects of the European economy and this ubiquity... more Data is becoming increasingly important for all aspects of the European economy and this ubiquity of data presents a conundrum for the legislator, who is under pressure from different stakeholders which often have divergent understandings of what actually constitutes “data”. It is therefore all the more surprising, that so few studies, reports and press articles actually address the variety of data in different contexts. This paper provides several classification systems for data and then provides two case studies – at the time of writing still ongoing in the legislative process – about the implications of data in (i) the revision of the copyright review (text and data mining) and (ii) data protection legislation, with emphasis on the perspective of the research community. Both legislative proposals have a potentially significant impact on the ongoing efforts to eliminate barriers in order to realise economic benefits of the digital economy. The authors assert that a flexible framework, which takes the variability of data into account, is needed in order to square the potential tension between accessibility of research data on the one side and IPR and data protection on the other side. They point to the Horizon 2020 open access to research data pilot as a potential example of how such a practical solution could be achieved. The article concludes by pointing to the changes in the scientific system, which are likely to give rise to further opportunities but also challenges for legislators and policy makers alike.

Presentation at the NCP_WIDE_NET Workshop on Legal and Financial Aspects held at Escuela de Estud... more Presentation at the NCP_WIDE_NET Workshop on Legal and Financial Aspects held at Escuela de Estudios Hispanoamericanos (CSIC), Seville on March 3-4, 2016. Details about NCP_WIDE_NET project at http://www.ncpwidenet.eu/.

Der Blick auf internationale Aktivitaten zu Open Science zeigt ein breites Spektrum von einzelnen... more Der Blick auf internationale Aktivitaten zu Open Science zeigt ein breites Spektrum von einzelnen institutionellen Policies bis hin zu nationalen Aktionsplanen. Die vorliegenden Empfehlungen fur eine nationale Open Science Strategie in Osterreich orientieren sich an diesen internationalen Initiativen und stellen praktische Uberlegungen fur ihre koordinierte Implementierung im Hinblick auf strategische Entwicklungen in Forschung, Technologie und Innovation (FTI) bis 2030 in Osterreich dar. Dabei richten sie sich an alle relevanten Akteur*innen im FTI System, im Besonderen an Forschungsstatten, Forschungsforderer, Forschungspolitik, Gedachtnisinstitutionen wie Bibliotheken und Wissenschafter*innen. Das Empfehlungspapier wurde von 2018 bis 2020 von der OANA-Arbeitsgruppe "Open Science Strategie" entwickelt und im Fruhling 2020 das erste Mal fur eine offentliche Konsultation veroffentlicht. Die nun vorliegende finale Version des Empfehlungsdokuments, die Feedback und Kommentar...

International Journal of Digital Curation

PLOS ONE

Opening up research data has been linked to a host of benefits, not only for the science system b... more Opening up research data has been linked to a host of benefits, not only for the science system but also for broader processes of economic and social innovation. This is why policymakers and funders have taken steps to promote open data and, more recently, data that is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). Yet the positive impacts of open/FAIR data can only be realized if such data, once shared, is actually reused. With practices of data citation still in their infancy, reliable measures of the extent and nature of research data reuse remain elusive; too often, it is simply assumed that once a baseline set of conditions are met, reuse will automatically follow. While scholarly studies of reuse practices are becoming more common, they often limit themselves to specific disciplinary contexts and rarely consider business or societal reusers. Efforts to build more general models (e.g., Kim and Yoon 2017) have tended to ground themselves in psychological theories of p...

Abstract: The Open Science (OS) movement has been seen as an important facilitator for public par... more Abstract: The Open Science (OS) movement has been seen as an important facilitator for public participation in science. This has been underpinned by the assumption that widespread and free access to research outputs leads to (i) better and more efficient science, (ii) economic growth, in particular for small and medium-sized enterprises wishing to capitalise on research findings and (iii) increased transparency of knowledge production and its outcomes. The latter in particular could function as a catalyst for public participation and engagement. Whether OS is likely to help realise these benefits, however, will depend on the emergence of systemic incentives for scientists to utilise OS in a meaningful manner. While some areas, the environmental sciences have a long tradition of open ethos, citizen inclusion and global collaborations, such activities need to be more systematically supported and promoted by funders and learned societies in order to improve scientific research and publ...

Open research Europe, Feb 21, 2022

PLOS ONE, Aug 18, 2022

International Journal of Digital Curation, Sep 20, 2022

Geo: Geography And Environment, Mar 23, 2015

Mitteilungen der Vereinigung Österreichischer Bibliothekarinnen & Bibliothekare, Oct 4, 2019

Springer eBooks, 2015

International Journal of Digital Curation

PLOS ONE

Research Data Management - A European Perspective,, 2017

This article provides an overview of open research data and research data management in Horizon 2... more This article provides an overview of open research data and research data management in Horizon 2020. It describes the open research data pilot in Horizon 2020, which, as of 2017, has been extended to cover all thematic areas of Horizon 2020 ('open data as the default'). However, the Commission also recognises that there are also good reasons to keep data closed and thus allows individual opt-outs. Good research data management in a broader sense has emerged as a key issue in this context. The link between openness and general management of research data is provided by a key document mandatory for all Horizon 2020 projects which do not opt-out: the data management plan (DMP). In the 2016 update of the Horizon 2020 guidelines on data management it was made clear that the DMP should outline how projects make their data FAIR: findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable. Initial experience with DMP assessment by research data management (RDM) experts in H2020 reveals that additional guidance on data management is needed for all groups of actors in research projects. Aspects such as data preservation, IPR or standards are too often not well developed in the DMPs that have been submitted so far. However, improved guidance and tools are expected to improve these competences. Nevertheless research projects with excellent RDM performance are not rare. Some high quality DMPs from H2020 projects have already been published online 1. While costs for data management can be covered by the beneficiaries and are fully eligible for reimbursement in Horizon 2020 many project participants need information about the adequate level of spending for data management in projects. At the moment, those projects opting out of opening their research data do not have to provide a DMP. The authors believe that in the future all projects should produce a DMP, even if they choose to keep some (or even all) of their data closed. In this case, the DMP should still address the curation and preservation of such data.