The Open Data Network Project, financed by RNP to support the execution of activities foreseen in the technical cooperation agreement between RNP, IBICT and CNPq, carried out, throughout 2022, several actions to promote the transfer of knowledge and encourage the creation of an institutional repositories of research data network. Academic execution is carried out by the “Brazilian Research Data Network (WG-RDP Brasil)” working group, made up of professors and scholars from the Center for Documentation and Digital Research Collection (CEDAP) of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS).  

In a satisfaction survey promoted by RNP, representatives of the institutions served, including CBPF, Embrapa, Fiocruz and UFRA, UFC, UFG, evaluated that the advisory support for R&D by WG-RDP Brasil “contributed substantially to the accomplishment of its work” and that the knowledge shared in the training “provided reflection and expansion of understanding on the subject and the exchange of experiences with other institutions”.  

Throughout 2022, the STIs selected by the incubation notice of research data repositories benefited from weekly mentoring meetings with the WG-RDP team under the executive coordination of RNP and IBICT. In the second half of the year, the founding institutions of the National Consortium for Open Science (CoNCIenciA) joined the group. A development that emerged from these meetings was the IBICT's suggestion for choosing the framework for the CoreTrustSeal for the certification of reliable digital repositories as a driver for network meetings in the second half of 2022.  

100% of respondents consider that the choice of CoreTrustSeal as a reference model was appropriate and that the degree of difficulty in understanding the conditions for certification has decreased considerably. The institutions also expressed the wish that the collective services carried out by the WG-RDP Brasil to promote the exchange of knowledge between the STIs participating in the Open Data Network continue in 2023.  

“Having this feedback from the STIs that participated in the specialized R&D consultancy for opening research data in their respective institutional repositories is an indicator that we are on the right track with the Open Data Network”, says Carolina Howard Felicíssimo, RNP R&D coordinator.  

2023 Vision is the subject of the last meeting of the semester cycle 

On December 7th, the initiative held the last meeting of the 2022.2 cycle, which aimed to align concepts and expectations between the institutions involved with the initiative, including: Embrapa, Fiocruz, UFC, UFG, Ufra, CBPF and UFRGS .  

RNP's R&D manager, Gustavo Dias, presented RNP's vision for the Open Data Network in 2023: to be a subset of the Brazilian Network of Digital Repositories (RBRD) with a selection of Institutional Research Data Repositories based on the Dataverse tool, as well as the role of institutions at each level of the network. “The expectation is that during the year 2023 this vision will be widely discussed, validated and aligned with IBICT and CNPq in order to seek the appropriate mechanisms for the governance of the network, in addition to the continuity of engagement actions with the institutions involved”, he says.   

Serving a wider range of STIs and seeking a sustainability model for the Network are on RNP's horizon for next year. “Furthermore, it is important to point out that the STIs are in the phase of offering their respective institutional repositories of research data. There is a long and arduous path to keep these repositories in operation and thus guarantee the strengthening of Brazilian Open Science”, says Carolina Felicíssimo.  

History  

Since 2017, through the formalization of a Technical Cooperation Agreement [DOI, 2017], RNP and IBICT have been working together to promote research and development (R&D) activities in projects in the area of Open Access to Research Data. One of its first actions was the launch of an open call for the purpose of identifying practices in addition to prototyping a service for open access to research data. 

The selected work group was the “Brazilian Research Data Network (WG-RDP Brasil)”, in 2017, consisting at the time of professors and scholars from the Centers for Documentation and Digital Research Collection (CEDAP) and Data Processing (CPD), both from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), in addition to the Information Management Research Group of the Computational Sciences Center (C3) of the Federal University of Rio Grande (FURG). RNP fostered financial resources for hiring professors and scholarship holders from WG-RDP Brasil and IBICT followed with the guidelines for the R&D to be carried out. 

Over the course of two years of the project (2018 – 2020), WG-RDP Brasil carried out R&D actions, both in conceptual and technological aspects, through proof of concepts (PoCs) for opening institutional data with experimentation in Dataverse, open software developed to serve as a repository of research data. 

Ao longo de dois anos de projeto (2018 – 2020), o GT-RDP Brasil executou ações de P&D, tanto nas vertentes conceitual quanto tecnológica, através de provas de conceitos (PoCs) para abertura de dados institucionais com experimentação em Dataverse, software aberto desenvolvido para servir como repositório de dados de pesquisa.