National Open Research Data Strategy

Abstract

Together with the Open Access Strategy developed in 2024, the National Open Research Data Strategy is intended to enable Switzerland to implement a coherent and ambitious open science policy in line with European and global developments.

The Swiss National ORD Strategy provides a framework for the development of practices built around sharing research data in Switzerland, and for governing the services and infrastructures that support researchers and enable ORD practices. The Strategy addresses research data from publicly funded research in Switzerland, with research data being understood in a broad sense. The Strategy is concerned with data in the form of digital objects that are required for the reuse of data and reproduction of research results. It also encourages researchers and research communities to adopt ORD practices and aims to foster the use of and facilitate the development of these practices. The default mode of sharing data in the Strategy is openness; exemptions due to overriding legal, ethical, commercial, and security reasons are possible. By facilitating access to and reuse of research data, ORD promotes better, more effective, and more impactful research for the benefit of society as a whole. Through the principles of open access and reusability of research data, ORD practices support transparent and reproducible research findings. Moreover, ORD fosters collaboration by promoting exchange among researchers across disciplines, legal systems and national borders, thus enabling creativity and innovation to thrive.

The Swiss scientific community is committed to adopting international best practices regarding ORD, especially the FAIR principles of Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reusability. The key stakeholders at Swiss higher education, research and innovation institutions acknowledge the resulting costs that may arise after a research project has been concluded – in particular the long-term maintenance, curation, and community support costs – and they are committed to supporting researchers in developing the necessary skills, services, and infrastructures.

Overview

Country	Switzerland
Start date	2021
Annual Budget	n/a
Responsible organisation(s)	Government Agency
Target group(s)	Established researchers|Higher education institutes|Students|Junior researchers|Public research institutes|Students
Policy instrument type	Strategies, agendas and plans

Background

In January 2020, the State Secretariat for Education, Research, and Innovation (SERI) commissioned swissuniversities to develop a Swiss National Open Research Data Strategy, an associated action plan, a background report as well as a mandate for project-related contributions for Open Research Data activities from 2022–2024. This mandate is part of the Open Science programme and complements the activities in the Open Access field.

In July 2021, the Swiss National Strategy for Open Research Data (ORD) was published, representing a further step forthe Swiss Conference of Rectors of Higher Education Institutions (swissuniversities) towards Open Science. The Action Plan for Open Research Data (ORD), published in January 2022, concretises the measures of the ORD Strategy. The ORD Strategy and Action Plan were developed jointly by the Swiss Conference of Rectors of Higher Education Institutions (swissuniversities), the ETH Domain, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, and have open access to research data at their core. The partner organisations will continue their collaboration through the ORD Strategy Council established under the ORD Strategy.Based on the objectives set forth in the ORD Strategy, four action areas are defined in the ORD Action Plan that is funded over two ERI periods. The latest version of the Action Plan contains the planned federal funding for implementing those measures scheduled from 2022 to 2024.

The partner institutions use funds they have already budgeted for ORD, of which some are federal project contributions from the Open Science I programme. The Action Plan will was updated in the summer of 2022 for the 2025–2028 period on the basis of the partner organisations’ multi-year plans.Overall responsibility for the process was transferred to swissuniversities.

Objective(s)

To establish a coordinated framework that enables researchers to manage, share, and reuse research data openly and responsibly, fostering collaboration, transparency, and innovation in line with the FAIR principles.

Public access URL

https://www.swissuniversities.ch/fileadmin/swissuniversities/Dokumente/Hochschulpolitik/ORD/Swiss_National_ORD_Strategy_en.pdf

All tags

• Higher education institutes
• 2021
• Strategies, agendas and plans
• Re-usability
• Established researchers
• Students
• Technical Standards & Practices
• Switzerland
• Junior researchers
• Government agency
• Public research institutes

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