ICIQ has publicly released its Open Science Policy, whose main objective is to set an environment that ensures transparency and accessibility in research. This step reflects the institute’s commitment to sharing knowledge with peers and society, maximizing the impact of its work.
The policy defines how ICIQ intends to align with current European mandates as well as Spanish and Catalan regulations. It has been available to the ICIQ community since last March, within the ICIQ Open Science portal, launched during the ICIQ Open Data Day event. The portal centralizes resources for researchers, which makes it easier for them to navigate and adopt open science practices. It provides access to internal guides, links to open repositories, lists of external tools, data management resources and training materials.
Internal guidelines on Open Access and Data Management are also available, focusing on practical aspects of Open Science such as how to share publications, research data and other related metadata, following the principle of “as open as possible, as closed as necessary” to account for potential intellectual property conflicts. The institute benefits from the recent Transformative Agreements for CERCA centers for Open Access publications and is currently developing a new platform, the eChemPad, to streamline formatting and storage of experimental research data in the CORA.RDR repository. These efforts follow the pioneer work of ICIQ’s computational research groups within io-ChemBD, a recognized online platform to manage and share computational and materials science research data, with hundreds of users worldwide.
The Open Science policy has been developed by a working group composed of a broad representation of members from different areas of the institute, providing guidelines on FAIR data management, outlining the responsibilities of both ICIQ and its researchers in this area and highlighting the commitment to evaluate research more qualitatively, beyond traditional quantitative metrics, in line with the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA).
Additionally, the policy advocates for the implementation of regular training activities for researchers, including onboarding session, SHARP programme and Open Data Day, ensuring that everyone has the knowledge and the support needed to implement open science practices.
Open Science is one of ICIQ’s scientific and strategic objectives and our commitment to its development is also reflected in the recently awarded Severo Ochoa Centre of Excellence accreditation. This funding will partially support the implementation of the actions outlined above, including the recent recruitment of two key positions related to this topic: a Data Manager and a Data Steward. Altogether helping to fully implement the policy and further advance open science practices across the institute.
This action has received funding from the Spanish State Research Agency/Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities through the “Severo Ochoa” Centres of Excellence Programme 2024 (CEX2024-001469-S, MICIU/AEI/10.13039/501100011033).
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