Briefing paper for RDA Publishing Data Interest Group
This paper introduces the ‘Journal Research Data Policy Registry Pilot’ project currently underway at Jisc and positions it in the wider context of the RDA and particularly the RDA-WDS Publishing Data Interest Group. The briefing paper supports a proposal to the Publishing Data IG to initiate a Birds of a Feather session at Plenary 6 in Paris to canvas opinion on the prospect of a working group in the area of research data publication policy.
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The aim of the Journal Research Data Policy Registry (JRDPR) project is to pilot a service that enables researchers, research support staff, publishers, journals and other interested parties to create, search, view and update policies on the research data underlying academic publications. The focus of the pilot is on policies that are held by academic journals. As part of the open research data agenda, research funders have started to mandate that the research data behind publications is made widely and freely accessible. In order to comply with funders, researchers need access to clear guidelines on the academic journal’s expectations when it comes to deposit and access of the supporting data. Publishers are increasingly putting in place policies to support access to data. As research data management becomes a higher priority for institutions there is an opportunity for the sector to work with other stakeholders for more standardisation in the publication, access and citation of research data. The policy registry would support this by driving improvements in practice that give higher visibility to the availability and completeness of publishers’ research data policies.
i) The core aim of the pilot will be to prove the concept technically, and to assess the level of demand for a potential service. The project will develop and test the use cases on which a business case would be built and develop a prototype service implementation based on these
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Briefing paper for RDA Publishing Data Interest Group
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The project also aims to contribute to driving best practice regarding the publication of journal research data policies as an integral part of the scholarly communication process. The policy registry provides three opportunities to drive good practice in research data publication:
 to increase the absolute number of journals with research data policies as a result of making information on journals’ research data policies easily available;
 to drive practice towards the more robust end of the policy spectrum, through making comparison and assessment of policies easier;
 to contribute to the standardisation of policy by providing standard research data policy templates to incentivise journals to publish their policies in a standard way.
If successful, the pilot would contribute to the creation of a less chaotic policy landscape for researchers
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Objective
To build a community of engaged stakeholders who will accomplish a number of key tasks for the project as well as raise the profile of the project with both the UK sector and the international research community.
To build consensus on the elements and understanding of journal research data policies through a range of activities such as an RDA group, the Project Expert
Advisory Group and practitioner engagement through testing.
Deadline
First round April-June 2015
Second round September 2016
Project Expert Advisory group June
2015
RDA Group September 2015 –
March 2017
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To develop and build a prototype Journal Research Data
Policy Registry service which meets the needs of the use cases developed and prioritised in consultation with the stakeholder group.
September 2015 (Rapid prototype)
Iterative development to April 2016 then wider user-testing.
To evaluate the prototype against the use cases as a proof of concept exercise.
To evaluate the potential for a Journal RD Policy Registry service and the further implementation and uptake of the best practice developed
September 2016
September 2016

Briefing paper for RDA Publishing Data Interest Group
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In order for the journal registry project to succeed there needs to be both sustained and wide engagement of stakeholders in the research data policy space which goes beyond the immediate scope of the Jisc project. The initial focus of the project is on journals’ policies but there is a much wider ecosystem of data publication to consider. The early feedback from Jisc’s collaborators points to the need for standardisation of policies across this wider group of stakeholders: publishers, repositories, funders, researchers and institutions. In addition, there is the consideration of standardisation at the disciplinary level where formats, vocabularies and definitions vary considerably. The RDA provides a platform to engage with these groups, an opportunity to promote the conversation around standardisation of policies and, if agreed, a process through which tangible outputs would be produced for adoption. The Publishing
Data IG has already established a wide audience of stakeholders in this space and the subject of publication policies would both fit under its remit and be consistent with its objectives (‘promote and establish the data publication concept among science publications…’ and ‘…establish data publication services as part of scholarly publishing’. Early conversations with those involved with both this IG and other groups at the RDA indicate that this is a relatively undeveloped area which would benefit from attention.
A Birds of Feather session at the RDA Plenary 6 would have the following aims:
• to gauge the interest in the subject across the RDA
• to gain feedback from interested parties who are already involved in similar work both inside and outside the RDA.
• to gain feedback on whether a working group in this area would be supported by the community and particularly within the RDA-WDS Publishing Data Interest Group.
• (if applicable) to gain feedback on of the priorities in this area for a working group and next steps.
If a working group is agreed the JRDPR project has a number of outputs which could be a starting point for discussion such as the data model for the prototype, the standard policy templates and the use cases for the pilot. JRDPR could also provide a platform to adopt the outputs of a working group.

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Briefing paper for RDA Publishing Data Interest Group