Open data has been rapidly gaining momentum over the past decade, with funders and institutions alike introducing data sharing policies to align with frameworks like the FAIR Data principles. Open Research Europe follows the FAIR Data principles and implements a data policy fully aligned with the requirements of Horizon Europe.
To demonstrate open data in action, we’re highlighting the benefits of open data and data-sharing success stories from real Open Research Europe authors.
Why share your data openly?
Sharing research data can accelerate the pace of discovery, provide credibility and recognition for authors, and lead to increased public trust in research. This also brings benefits for wider society, including driving innovation in technology, better evidence-based policy-making, and economic benefits.
Proven key benefits of open data include:
Increased credibility
Open data boosts the credibility of research and enhances the transparency of the research process.
By providing access to your data and source materials, as well as comprehensive information about them, you enable others to reproduce the research. This can help to corroborate findings and, in turn, build trust in results.
By doing this, others can ensure your conclusions are built upon a firm foundation, helping to demonstrate its robustness within the research community and beyond.
Enhanced visibility
If you publish your research as an article and deposit datasets in a repository, your work can be found via both routes. This can lead to more visibility of the research, as readers can discover and access it via both the journal and the repository.
Get credited
If your data is cited by another researcher in their work, you will get credit as the person who created it. Similarly, other stakeholders and third parties, such as commercial organizations, museums and libraries, also get credit for making resources available.
Greater citations
There is evidence that open data sharing is associated with increased citations, with one study finding that sharing data openly in repositories is associated with up to 25% more citations to the research paper.
Learn more about open data on Open Research Europe
Data-sharing in action
But what does data-sharing look like in practice? Take a look at three data-sharing success stories from Open Research Europe authors.
The abTEM code: transmission electron microscopy from first principles
This Software Tool Article introduces an open-source code (abTEM) designed to improve simulation of transmission electron microscopy images or diffraction patterns, enabling better interpretation of experimental data.
abTEM can simulate most standard imaging modes, incorporates the latest algorithmic developments, and is accessible to domain experts without extensive programming experience, as it is written purely in Python and designed for easy modification and extension.
A spatiotemporal atlas of hydropower in Africa for energy modelling purposes
The modelling of electricity systems with substantial shares of renewable resources, such as solar power, wind power and hydropower, requires datasets on renewable resource profiles with high spatiotemporal resolution to be made available to the energy modelling community. While these resources exist for solar power and wind power profiles on diurnal and seasonal scales across all continents, this is not yet the case for hydropower.
This Data Note presents a newly developed open-access African hydropower atlas, containing seasonal hydropower generation profiles for nearly all existing and several hundred future hydropower plants on the African continent, with all the data underpinning the findings of the investigation being readily available to readers.
The atlas builds on continental-scale hydrological modelling in combination with detailed technical databases of hydropower plant characteristics and can facilitate modelling of power systems across Africa.
Finite difference magnetoelastic simulator
Open source magnetoelastic simulation software packages are key to understanding the impacts and uses of magnetostriction in microelectronics and other advanced technologies. However, these packages are still scarce.
This Software Tool Article introduces one such software, which is an extension of the micromagnetic finite difference simulation software MuMax3, to help solve elasto-magneto-dynamical problems.
The Article describes the software, which is available under the GNU General Public License, and gives a short introduction on how to use it.
