Description

On 21 September 2007, the European Science Foundation (ESF) and the German Research Foundation (DFG) organised a one-day workshop “Shared responsibilities in sharing research data”. The workshop was held in the frame of the 5th follow-up conference of the Berlin Declaration on Open Access which took place at the University of Padua (Italy).
The Berlin Declaration on Open Access, signed by many European research organisations, has triggered a wide range of efforts and initiatives to facilitate access to research publications. Yet the Berlin Declaration on Open
Access goes beyond scientific publications. It covers also “ .... raw data and metadata, source materials, digital
representations of pictorial and graphical materials and scholarly multimedia material”.
It is against a background of growing consensus that enabling access to research data is an equally important
task, and that a shared vision and sense of responsibility is needed among the stakeholders to make “open
data” a reality, that this workshop was organised.
The objectives of the workshop were:
• to acquaint research organisations in Europe (primarily ESF member organisations) with on-going and planned
initiatives for open access to research data;
• to present and discuss policies and practices on open access to research data of selected research funding
organisations;
• to identify areas in which research organisations could collaborate on this issue.
The speakers, coming from the scientific community, funding organisations, data centres, and universities, met
an equally diverse audience in a lively debate about the tasks which need to be undertaken and the challenges
to be addressed in order to secure research data for the future generations of researchers.
We are very thankful to the speakers and the more than 80 participants who, through their contributions or
questions and interventions, made this debate possible.
We are also grateful to the local host, the Conference of Italian University Rectors and the organising team headed by Ms Antonella De Robbio, University of Padua, for the effective and the valuable support provided during the workshop. We hope that this report shows the breadth and various angles of issues raised and captures the essence of the recommendations made. We believe its input will guide future efforts in sharing research data.