The FSM: Data Management Plan

A Data Management Plan (DMP) is an essential aspect of any research project. In the context of projects funded by the European Union, the Commission requires that a DMP be conducted within the first six months of a project. A DMP is a report that outlines the management of data, describing how data is to be collected, processed or generated within a research project. Furthermore, a DMP should be aligned with the European commission’s open data policy and its objective to make research findable, accessible, interoperate and reusable (FAIR).

During the course of TheFSM project, the UNIVIE team conducted and submitted three versions of a DMP, specific to the project. TheFSM is a Horizon 2020 project that seeks to develop a platform to facilitate secure and controlled data sharing among food safety actors for inspection, certification and commercial purposes. The DMPs conducted during TheFSM project were based on European Commissions FAIR Data Management Guidelines and on the Guidelines on Open Access to Scientific Publications and Research Data in Horizon 2020. These guidelines detail how project data should be handled during and after the project.

TheFSM DMP report identifies the data generated and collected in course of the project and provides a detailed analysis of the life cycles of the various data sets and metadata. Including (meta)data production, storage, organisation, publication, access, sharing, reuse, preservation and archiving. The four main categories of research data identified in the project are:  

1.     Administrative Data – data generated or collected for organisational, managerial, transactional and record-keeping purposes during the project. For example partners´ contacts, templates of deliverables and reports or e-mails and minutes from meetings.

2.     Platform Data – data produced, collected and exchanged between actors in the supply chain on TheFSM Platform. Some examples include different types of farm data, such as farm management systems or pesticide database, as well as producer or user account data.

3.     Technical Data - the main software development data generated during the project.

4.     Pilot Data – data collected and generated in the course of piloting and testing the functionalities of the platform with several external companies and industry players.

The FAIR data management principles are essential aspects of any DMP. According to the FAIR Data Management Guidelines, Horizon 2020 beneficiaries shall make their research data and metadata FAIR, meaning findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable.

Findable

Humans as well as computers are able to discover, identify and locate research (meta)data.

Accessible

Access to research (meta)data should be granted, if such access is appropriately authorised.

Interoperable

(Meta)data need to interoperate with applications or workflows for analysis, storage, and processing. (Meta)data should use broadly applicable language for knowledge representation.

Reusable

(Meta)data should be well-described and governed by accessible data licenses, so that they can be replicated and/or combined in different settings.

 

In order to ensure that data sets, which are generated and collected in TheFSM project are findable, the data collection and processing workflow include discrete steps in which different versions of the data are stored. In particular, the data is stored and maintained in a way that ensures its traceability, including by uniform way of naming the documents, keeping the backup versions in the project repository. Accessibility of the data within the project varies depending on the storage location and confidentiality requirements. Most of the administrative, such as public deliverables and technical data, such as open source software is openly accessible. However, in the course of the project a large amount of business-sensitive data is exchanged. Such data is governed by contractual agreements and license agreements and is therefore not openly accessible.

TheFSM project aims to develop an industrial platform for the exchange of data. As such, one of the key objectives is to connect various different systems to achieve interoperability, in particular system interoperability and data interoperability. Furthermore, the industrial data platform facilitates the re-use of the data between researchers, institutions, orgaisations and other such parties, while complying with contractual commitments such as nondisclosure agreements, license agreements and consent requirements. Accordingly, the DMP outlines which parts of the data sets will be shared for verification or re-use, the standards that will be used and the handling of research data after the end of the project.

Finally, the DMP monitors the privacy and confidentiality of the data sets in TheFSM and finally sets out the legal and ethical standards for data generation, use, storage and sharing in line with the overall-management of the project, as foreseen in Grant agreement and Consortium agreement.

For a more detailed analysis of the data management plan visit the website of TheFSM project, where the latest version of the Data Management Plan is available: https://foodsafetymarket.eu/.

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Sources:

European Commission H2020 Programme, Guidelines on FAIR Data Management in Horizon 2020 Version 3.0 [2016] https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/grants_manual/hi/oa_pilot/h2020-hi-oa-data-mgt_en.pdf.

European Commission H2020 Programme, Guidelines to the Rules on Open Access to Scientific Publications and Open Access to Research Data in Horizon 2020, Version 3.2 [2017] https://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/data/ref/h2020/grants_manual/hi/oa_pilot/h2020-hi-oa-pilot-guide_en.pdf.

The Food Safety Market Project, ‘The Food Safety Market - the Food Safety Market’ https://foodsafetymarket.eu/.

Forgό N and others, ‘D8.5 – Data Management Handling Plan’ [2022] Zenodo https://zenodo.org/record/6107188#.Y90KN3bMKUl:~:text=Target%20URL-.