Open Science and Data Policy

At CDN, we are fostering Open Science and Open Data through a series of recommendations. We follow the Charter of Good Practices for Open Sciences, adopted by the Observatoire de Paris, in September 2018. The main points of this charter are:

  • Systematic deposit of publications in an open archive repository.
  • Development of a data management plan.
  • Opening of research data by default, and data management according to FAIR principles.
  • Compliance with the requirements of the French Research Ethics Charter.
  • Raising the awareness and training of researchers, engineers, students and doctoral students in the issues of open science.

The application of these principles to the ORN is declined in several ways, beyond the principles stated above, which fully apply, for example, to the publications of research teams using the instruments of the ORN. Our goal is to provide FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) and science ready products to the scientific community.

Open Repositories

The scientific publications making use or related to any instruments of the ORN, shall be deposited in an open archive, such as ArXiv or HAL. We recommend to use HAL, including the “USN” tag (old name of the ORN), so that the publications can be easily retrieved from: https://cnrs.hal.science/USN.

Datasets collected with instruments of the ORN, derived from such original datasets, or that have been processed using the ORN data and computing facility, shall also be published in open repositories. We recommend to publish the datasets in the following repositories:

  • CDS/Vizier: This repository is maintained by the CDS (Centre de Données Astronomique de Strasbourg). The Vizier database gathers a large number of astronomical catalogues and tables published in the astronomy and astrophysics literature. This repository will make your data visible and accessible in most of the virtual observatory tools, such as TOPCAT or Aladin. However, Vizier is not so well adapted for some datasets or solar system related science topics. Contact the CDS team to make sure your dataset fits into the scope of their repository. You can submit your dataset using this page: https://cdsarc.cds.unistra.fr/vizier/submit.htx
  • MASER: The repository is maintained by MASER team at Observatoire de Paris. This repository is dedicated to time dependent low frequency radio astronomy datasets. The MASER team is involved in several pilots on open science, and thus is making sure the datasets are shared with the latest standards and applications of the community. Please contact the MASER team for more details on the data publication.
  • RechercheDataGouv: This repository is a French national infrastructure dedicated to long trail data, which doesn’t fit in specialised or discipline repository. This repository is currently reserved for members of French institutions. You can submit your datasets to your institution RechercheDataGouv space: CNRS repository, ObsParis repository, Université Paris-Saclay repository, Sorbonne Université repository, etc. You can send a message to the CDN team if you submit a dataset in RechercheDataGouv, so that they can add is to the ORN data collection.
  • Zenodo: This is a generic repository. Resources related to the ORN can be published in that repository, and associate the record to the Nancay Radioastronomy Observatory community. A member of the CDN team will curate and approve your record as soon as possible.
Open Software

Software developed in the frame of projects related to the ORN shall be published with an open license, and shared in an open software repository. For ObsParis personnels, we recommend to use the institution’s GitLab server, but using other open software forges is also acceptable (such as, e.g., GitHub). A big advantage of using github is to be able to publish your code to Zenodo.

We recommend to add codemeta metadata to your repository, so that the software publication is facilitated (through software heritage, for instance)

Licensing

According to French law, all resources (data, documentation, software, etc) produced by a public administration (such as research labs) must be published with an open license. The official legal license is the Etalab-2.0 open license, however, it is possible to share data under Creative-Commons-Attribution (CC-BY) license (which is very close to the Etalab Open License).

For sharing software, several options are available, depending on the licenses of the pieces of code that are reused.

Data Management Plan

Each instrument team or user at CDN shall have a Data Management Plan in place. This is a working and evolving document, which is used as an interface between the team or user and the CDN management team. The document defines what data are produced, their life cycle, their location, their accessibility and distribution channels, as well as the responsibilities of each parties. The DMP is thus a tool for the teams or users (improving their data management), as well as for the CDN team (improving the service, with accurate prediction of needs).

Open Publication Guidelines
  • Open publication of data collections and associated documentation, with the usage of persistent identifiers (Digital Object Identifiers, DOI) for data collections, associated documentation, and metadata collections when applicable. This enables proper data citation and attribution practices, as well as traceability of the scientific analysis processes, and the reusability of the data products.
  • Promoting the usage of identifiers for persons (Open Research Contributors ID, ORCID), institutions (Research Organisation Registry, ROR), and repositories (Registry of Research Data Repositories, Re3data).
  • We are asking the CDN users to acknowledge the usage of CDN resources when publishing scientific papers.
  • We are asking CDN data users to cite the datasets in their publication, as a reference including the DOI to the dataset, using the citation provided in each dataset page.
  • We are working with the instrument teams and users to produce science ready products, which are openly accessible through community standard and interoperable interfaces (e.g., through the so-called Virtual Observatory interfaces in astronomy), as well as standard data formats and metadata dictionaries.
Data Publication Inventory

An inventory of the data collections related to ORN’s activity is compiled and updated regularly. This concerns both the digital collections hosted on the site’s servers, but also the old collections of data on analogue media (film, tape…) and also collections hosted in other institutes or data centres. The listed collections will enter into a virtuous process of openness that will lead to better scientific visibility and facilitate their reuse. Following the guidelines presented in this page will help the CDN team to update this list, and will enhance the visibility of your work.