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. This is achieved through the following actions:

• Each instrument team or user at CDN should 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 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 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.

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.