Roles and responsibilities of researchers

Clarify roles and responsibilities of researchers and other staff responsible for data access, so as to promote awareness and a culture of confidence and avoid undue risk averseness.

Promoting awareness and confidence in Open Science and research data access requires clear role definitions within Research Performing Organisations (RPOs). This helps prevent undue risk aversion while ensuring compliance with ethical, legal, and institutional policies.

National authorities and RPOs should collaborate to establish a clear framework defining researchers and other staff roles to ensure consistency and confidence. Institutional policies should specify researcher roles in data access, underpinned by good practices and tailored to disciplinary needs.

Clear guidelines, embedded in these policies and communicated widely, will enhance awareness and adoption. Institutional Research Data Management (RDM) policies  need to identify roles and define mechanisms for monitoring and enforcement.

Roles should include:

• Principal Investigators (PIs) / Lead Researchers responsible for overseeing RDM policies and ensuring data access is compliant with ethical, legal, and institutional policies.

• Data Stewards / Research Data Managers to support researchers by providing technical expertise on data curation, storage, sharing, and compliance.

• Ethics Committees / Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) to ensure that research data access follows ethical guidelines and protects participants' rights. 

• IT and Data Security Teams to ensure that data access systems, repositories, and security protocols are in place to support Open Science initiatives.

• Legal & Data Protection Officers to ensure research data access policies comply with legal and regulatory requirements.

• Librarians and Open Science Advocates who play a crucial role in educating researchers on Open Science and providing repository support.

RPOs should take an active role in awareness-building, providing training on research data management (e.g., through doctoral programs), developing infrastructure (e.g., repositories), and offering tools (e.g., DMP platforms) and support services (e.g., data stewards).

Regular communication campaigns targeting researchers and the broader public can promote a culture of trust in data sharing while mitigating undue risk averseness, fostering confidence in national data policies.

Defining clear roles and responsibilities for researchers and staff in data access presents several challenges, such as:

• Overlapping mandates and fragmented policies across ministries, research-performing organizations (RPOs), and institutions create confusion and hinder accountability, particularly in multidisciplinary projects.  

• Researchers often lack adequate training and guidance in data management, preservation, and sharing, leaving them to navigate complex standards and interoperability requirements with limited expertise.

• Infrastructure-related challenges include excessive restrictions on data access and sharing, discouraging collaboration and open science practices. Researchers face a heavy workload and technical demands in implementing FAIR principles, which are often beyond their expertise. 

• Policies that fail to embed data stewards to support these responsibilities exacerbate these challenges.

• Conflicts between researchers’ self-interests in data publication and open access principles, coupled with inadequate mechanisms for proper citation and attribution, deter data sharing. 

• Raising awareness of the benefits of open data practices and providing resources to ensure proper acknowledgment are critical but often overlooked hurdles.