The ESRF Council endorsed an update of the ESRF Data Policy for Public Access for data taken at the ESRF beamlines in December 2023. The updated policy includes recommendations from the PaNOSC FAIR Research Data Policy Framework which was a deliverable of the European H2020 EOSC project PaNOSC . The core principles of the original Data Policy for publicly funded research (adopted in 2015) which define the ESRF as the custodian of raw data and metadata have been maintained. This means the ESRF will provide users with automatically collected metadata for all publicly funded experiments carried out on its beamlines, including the beamlines from Collaborating Research Groups. The metadata are stored in the ICAT metadata catalogue which can be accessed online to browse and download (meta)data. The experimental team will have sole access to the data during a three-year embargo period, renewable if necessary. After the embargo period, the data from publicly funded research will be released under a CC-BY-4 licence with open access to everyone. Experimental teams are encouraged to release their data before the end of the embargo period by creating bespoke DOIs for the data used in publications. Data generated by publicly funded experiments have a DOI created automatically for them for the case that the experimental team does not create any bespoke DOIs.

The updated Data Policy 2024 introduces the following changes:

  1. Inclusion of the possibility of more extensive data curation, including processed data, triage and the use of lossy compression, or limiting the amount of data stored;
  2. Addition of a reference to FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) principles [1];
  3. Three year embargo rule also to the experiment report
  4. Simplification of the text to make more readable

The updated data policy applies from 1st of January 2024.

Data produced by commercial or proprietary beamtime are reserved for the group paying for the beamtime and are considered under embargo forever unless requested to be opened by the group concerned. Further details on how data from commercial beamtime are governed are described in the Data Policy for Commercial Access.

The ESRF data policy comes very timely as the scientific landscape in Europe and worldwide changes with the requirement for Open Data becoming mandatory for journals and learned societies. In Europe the European Commission is driving this movement with the help of the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The ESRF data policy implements the principles of Open Science and FAIR data to enable users to publish results derived from data taken at the ESRF with bespoke DOIs and data being archived for at least 10 years. The ESRF provides an additional service to users who need to fill in Data Management Plans (DMPs) for data produced at the ESRF.

The appropriate Data Policy has to be accepted when applying for beam time.

To cite the ESRF Data Policy 2024 for public beamtime use this DOI: https://doi.esrf.fr/10.15151/ESRF-DC-1534175008

Any questions concerning the Data Policy or its implementation can be addressed to dataportal-feedback@esrf.fr

[1] Wilkinson, M., Dumontier, M., Aalbersberg, I. et al. The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship. Sci Data 3, 160018 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2016.18