The Group of Eight joins other research university networks* to adopt the Sorbonne Declaration on Research Data Rights

“The conclusions of leading universities’ major research projects are typically published in prestigious and often open access journals, and usually developed using global teams comprised of some of the best researchers in their fields, the data underpinning such research is not often so readily available. The research results are set out, but not always the data specifics of how those results were arrived at; the proof,” the Eight state.

The Sorbonne Declaration calls on “the global scholarly and research community to join signatories in; “building interoperable instruments and appropriate data repositories to share research data as much as possible.”

And it requests funding agencies consider the management of research data as a fully eligible activity for funding.

The declaration also calls on governments to develop laws/policies to, “avoid a ‘lock-in effect’ from commercial platforms and data services to ensure the openness and the reusabilty for research data.”

* including the Association of American Universities, the Russell Group (UK), the U15 groups of both Canada and Germany and Japan’s RU11.