The FAIRness of data management plans: an assessment of some European DMPs

The FAIR principles have become a data management instrument for the academic and scientific community, since they provide a set of guiding principles to bring findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability to data and metadata stewardship. Since their official publication in 2016 by Scientific Data – Nature, these principles have received worldwide recognition and have been quickly endorsed and adopted as a cornerstone of data stewardship and research policy. However, when put into practice, they occasionally result in organisational, legal and technological challenges that can lead to doubts and uncertainty as to whether the effort of implementing them is worthwhile. Soon after their publication, the European Commission and other funding agencies started to require that project proposals include a Data Management Plan (DMP) based on the FAIR principles. This paper reports on the adherence of DMPs to the FAIR principles, critically evaluating ten European DMP templates. We observed that the current FAIRness of most of these DMPs is only partly satisfactory, in that they address data best practices, findability, accessibility and sometimes preservation, but pay much less attention to metadata and interoperability. Los principios FAIR se han convertido en una herramienta de gestión de datos para la comunidad académica y científica, ya que proporcionan un conjunto de principios rectores que facilitan la localización, accesibilidad, interoperabilidad y reutilización de la gestión de datos y metadatos. Desde su publicación oficial en 2016 por Scientific Data - Nature, estos principios han recibido reconocimiento mundial y fueron rápidamente respaldados y adoptados como pilares de la política de investigación y gestión de datos. Sin embargo, cuando se ponen en práctica, ocasionalmente presentan desafíos organizativos, legales y tecnológicos que pueden generar dudas e incertidumbres sobre el esfuerzo para implementarlos. Poco después de su publicación, la Comisión Europea y otras agencias de financiación comenzaron a exigir en sus propuestas de proyectos un Plan de Gestión de Datos (PGD) basado en los principios de FAIR. Este artículo informa sobre la adherencia de los PGD a los principios FAIR, evaluando críticamente diez modelos europeos de PGD. Observamos que el nivel de FAIRness de la mayoría de los PGD analizados sigue siendo parcialmente insatisfactorio, ya que abordan las mejores prácticas de datos, ubicación, accesibilidad y, a veces, preservación, pero prestan poca atención a los metadatos y la interoperabilidad. The FAIR principles have become a data management instrument for the academic and scientific community, since they provide a set of guiding principles to bring findability, accessibility, interoperability and reusability to data and metadata stewardship. Since their official publication in 2016 by Scientific Data – Nature, these principles have received worldwide recognition and have been quickly endorsed and adopted as a cornerstone of data stewardship and research policy. However, when put into practice, they occasionally result in organisational, legal and technological challenges that can lead to doubts and uncertainty as to whether the effort of implementing them is worthwhile. Soon after their publication, the European Commission and other funding agencies started to require that project proposals include a Data Management Plan (DMP) based on the FAIR principles. This paper reports on the adherence of DMPs to the FAIR principles, critically evaluating ten European DMP templates. We observed that the current FAIRness of most of these DMPs is only partly satisfactory, in that they address data best practices, findability, accessibility and sometimes preservation, but pay much less attention to metadata and interoperability.