Compliance & Requirements

On a global scale, and particularly at the European level, transparent management of research data has become a priority for governments and public funding agencies. These require both Data Management Plans (DMPs) and free access to scientific publications and the underlying data. On the other hand, an increasing number of scientific publishers have Data Policies and now require access to data, metadata, codes, materials, methods and protocols associated with both qualitative and quantitative research results.

In Switzerland, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) has been committed to opening up science since 2006. It requires the drafting of a DMP for all new funding requests since 2017 and the opening of all scientific productions resulting from projects it finances. For its part, Swissuniversities aims for 100% free access for all publications from universities from 2024 onwards, in accordance with its national strategy on Open Access.

Since November 2015, UNIL has been a signatory to the LERU Statement on Open Access to Research Publications, which aims to promote open publications, archiving and the availability of scientific data. UNIL also signed in 2018 the Berlin Declaration on Free Access to Knowledge in the Natural, Life, Human and Social Sciences and the San Francisco Declaration on Research Evaluation (DORA). This calls into question the growing use of bibliometric rankings as indices for the evaluation of research and researchers.

UNIL's research data strategy is part of this international and national framework. It is also based on the needs and expectations of its community identified in a survey conducted in 2015.

In this context :

• UNIL advocates honest and responsible research that aims to manage research data in a transparent and open manner, within the limits of the law and scientific requirements in terms of ethics, deontology and compliance with standards for the protection of the individual and intellectual property.
• In addition, the right of creators of research data to a reasonable first use is recognised. Indeed, the creation of original research data can often require a lot of expertise and work over many years. It is therefore essential that the transition to open data does not reduce the willingness of researchers to undertake the work of collecting and producing original research data.

The Rectorate has produced a number of directives to support the research conducted within it. These provide a general regulatory framework for all research conducted at UNIL.