Good research data management (RDM) aids in making conscious decisions about your research data. It is one of the most important facets of research management today, with universities and funding agencies propelling the use of RDM forwards. RDM is an important part of facilitating a culture of open science. Data that is well documented, curated and shared, is easier for fellow researchers and the public to find, validate, and reuse.

Language in Interaction is funded by a Gravitation grant from the Dutch Science Organisation (Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek, NWO). NWO is committed to furthering open access sharing of data resulting from research which was paid for by public funds. All research performed in the Language in Interaction consortium should be published open access. This includes datasets generating from NWO funded research. For more information on NWO guidelines on open science, please refer to the NWO website (https://www.nwo.nl/en/policies/open+science).

The most important backbone of good RDM is generally considered to be the FAIR principles (https://www.go-fair.org/fair-principles/). FAIR stands for Findable Accessible Interoperable Reusable and each of these principles is detailed on the FAIR website. This guideline is most commonly used by research institutes in implementing their RDM guidelines.

For the Language in Interaction consortium, research data is collected from a multitude of institutes. This means that first and foremost, as a researcher who is part of the consortium, you must be aware of the local guidelines used by your department and institute and make sure you follow them. All data management pages for research institutes associated with Language in Interaction can be found at the bottom of this page. You can also contact your local data manager for more information.

As a consortium we are dedicated to furthering open science and require our researchers to follow several steps in their RDM:

A research data management plan (DMP) must be filled out and discussed with the data manager to ensure all RDM follows FAIR principles.
Datasets should be shared upon publication of associated articles.

DATA MANAGEMENT PLAN

Each researcher in the Language in Interaction consortium is required to fill out the Data Management Plan. For collaborative projects, researchers can work together on one plan for the project group. When you begin your research in the consortium, you will be contacted with a request to fill out the DMP. For help with your DMP you can always contact the Language in Interaction office.

You can download the Language in Interaction Data Management Plan here. Because RDM is ever evolving, the DMP may be changed and updated along the way. If changes are required, you will be contacted again.

Filling out a DMP helps to think about the way data is going to be collected, stored, used, archived and shared at an early stage in the research process. Being informed about procedures, best practices, metadata standards and archiving will help streamline the execution of your research plans and the publication process.

OPEN SCIENCE – PUBLICATION OF DATASETS

All datasets accompanying published work from the Language in Interaction consortium need to be shared. This means that if you publish an article that has an associated dataset that can be shared, the dataset needs to be shared through a repository. The general rule of thumb is that each dataset should be shared as fully open access (everyone can see and access the data). However, if there is reason to restrict access upon request because of privacy concerns or use rights of the data, this is allowed. If you are in doubt whether your data can be openly shared, you should always contact your local data manager or the consortium data manager, who can help you make these decisions. Again, filling out the DMP will make you think about these questions in an early stage.

All publications (both research articles and datasets) should include appropriate acknowledgement of Language in Interaction funding by NWO, by including a line such as: “This research was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) under Gravitation grant Language in Interaction, grant number 024.001.006”.