On Friday, 14 February 2025, the Digital Repository of Ireland (DRI) and the National Open Research Forum (NORF) hosted a one-hour webinar on Irish data policies, highlighting emerging trends in policy recommendations that are helping to shape the Irish research landscape.
This webinar was part of a series of events organised globally under Love Data Week 2025, hosted by the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). The theme for this year was ‘Whose Data Is It, Anyway?’.
Research data policies are the backbone of open research, ensuring organisational transparency and accountability by clearly communicating specific expectations for responsible data practice in different contexts. They are also useful tools for demonstrating an organisation’s alignment with certain communities of practice, international standards, and legal and ethical frameworks. The FAIRsharing registry is a useful tool to compare the ways in which openly published policies draw on similar principles or services, providing insight into how best practice in research data management is being interpreted locally.
Key highlights:
- The results of a FAIR-IMPACT support project to add Irish data policies to the FAIRsharing registry;
- Resources for data policy development, including the FAIR enabling data policy checklist; and
- Common trends gathered from policy metadata published in the FAIRsharing registry.
Featured Speaker: Dr Michelle Doran, National Open Research Coordinator, presented on ‘Institutional policies and strategies that promote open science’.
The National Action Plan for Open Research 2022–2030 (p.5) states that: ‘At an organisational level, we encourage the prioritisation of open research in institutional strategies, supported by policies and organisational action plans for open research aligned with international and national objectives. Policies and procedures should cover key areas including open access, research data management, and research assessment. Institutional support networks should be broad, involving professional support staff as well as teams of academic champions or fellows that support local awareness, engagement and effective implementation.’
Recording Available: For those who missed the live session, a recording of the webinar is available on DRI’s Vimeo channel
Thank you to all attendees for contributing to a vibrant discussion on the future of Irish data policies. For further queries, please contact Beth Knazook, DRI’s Research Data Project Manager, at b.knazook@ria.ie.
