#  Introduction

As a major funder of research and infrastructure, the European Commission has
a clear commitment to open science. This is exemplified by the Commission’s
2012 recommendation on access to and preservation of scientific information  1
, recognising the societal and economic benefits that open access to
publications and other research outputs can provide. These principles are
subsequently reflected in its Horizon 2020 2016-2017 Work programme (Part 16:
Science & Society)  2  . As the representatives of Research Infrastructures
that have been established to support the ecosystem of modern collaborative
science, the CORBEL participants are fully committed to this ethos and are
actively working towards the same agenda.

As a large and highly distributed project, it is essential that the CORBEL
consortium establish robust working practices that will maximise the value of
the project’s outcomes. As part of this goal, the consortium is committed to
enact effective data management policies both to safeguard data during the
project, and to ensure responsible stewardship following its conclusion. This
applies not only to any experimental research data generated by funded
activities, but the tools and knowledge we expect to generate. In so doing,
the consortium can maximise the utility of the project’s deliverables in the
communities of the participating Research Infrastructures, and thus maximise
the return on the Commission’s investment.

All of the Research Infrastructures participating in CORBEL take central roles
in the provision of infrastructure to safeguard data for their respective
scientific communities - facilitating access, re-use and reproducibility. Key
to this is not only to ensure that research data is made available, but that
it is published in such a way as to help researchers make use of it. These
requirements are exemplified in the FORCE11 group’s FAIR Principles  3  4  \-
that data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Re-usable. Indeed,
improving the infrastructure that allows scientists to make research data
conform to these guiding principles are a key aim of the CORBEL project
itself, including the management of data across infrastructure boundaries.
This builds upon and strengthens the data bridges laid down between the
Research Infrastructures during the BioMedBridges project, the successful
conclusion of which has begun to tackle the challenges of cross-disciplinary
data sharing and integration.

#  General Approach

As a cluster of Research Infrastructures, the CORBEL consortium’s approach to
ensuring effective data management and stewardship relies upon the existing
policies and expertise of the infrastructures. The Research Infrastructures
have established data strategies appropriate to the type of data and - having
the relevant expertise - are best placed to implement those strategies.  5  6

Common across these strategies is a commitment to open science, pursuing the
goal of sharing the outputs of publicly funded research whilst respecting the
varying ethical and legal contexts of these outputs and taking account of the
technical and social challenges of data sharing. For example, much of the data
managed by ELIXIR is routinely made available openly, and similarly the
INSTRUCT community has a long-standing tradition of depositing data in
established domain archives as a matter of course. Euro-BioImaging is
specifically seeking to encourage a similar ethos of data sharing by
developing standards and technical solutions, by addressing data flow in
tandem with access to the imaging infrastructure, as well as the
identification of reference datasets. On the other hand, sharing of data and
resources in BBMRI or ECRIN requires a specialised approach due to the
sensitive nature of the data. The Research Infrastructures are working to
improve access to human research data through technical solutions for managed
access. This includes secure computational infrastructure for specific
individuals to access data consented for research, but also exposing metadata
to allow for discovery.

Within CORBEL, the handling and deposition of research outputs will not be
managed centrally. Instead, responsibility is delegated to the Research
Infrastructures, who will retain control over and accountability for each
dataset, service, publication and software tool produced in the context of
CORBEL. By adopting this strategy, CORBEL can better ensure efficient and
effective management by clearly and unambiguously assigning responsibility for
the project’s outputs to the investigators producing them. This allows the
project to leverage the significant data management expertise of the partners
implementing each task.

#  Data

Many of the research infrastructures participating in CORBEL such as BBMRI,
ELIXIR, ECRIN and EuroBioImaging fulfil key roles in managing access to
scientific data or metadata, with varying approaches to data sharing as
appropriate. CORBEL is thus part of the effort to build Europe’s data
management and data stewardship infrastructure, and this is reflected in its
tasks and deliverables. In WP3, ECRIN will lead task 3.3, focussed on the
sharing of clinical trial data at multiple levels, from registration of trials
through to access to patient-level data. Similarly, task 3.4 seeks to enable
efficient biomarker research through the necessary sharing of data between
hospitals, who may individually lack sufficient patient numbers. Both are
challenging areas for data sharing, but are also of crucial importance in
clinical research and thus in addressing the grand challenges of improving
human health. Data management and data sharing infrastructure is itself built
upon data - for example vocabularies, ontologies and schemas that are
themselves datasets that must be sustainably managed. Interoperability of data
is a core focus of CORBEL, and work done in WP6 will deliver standards and
schemas that will address issues such as cross-domain identifier use and
provenance.

In addition, during the CORBEL project it is anticipated that new experimental
or informatics datasets may be generated as part of the joint research work
packages. For example in WP3 (Medical), subtask 3.5.3 “Data generation and
analysis” involves developing biomarker profiles for pancreatic cancer samples
within BBMRI. The early stages of WP4 (Bioscience) involve the selection of a
number of pilot projects through a competitive call; after proposals are
evaluated, details of data to be generated can be identified. Thus at this
stage in the project it is not possible to describe precisely the datasets
involved and how they will be handled. However, provision for the management
and stewardship of these datasets will be made in accordance with the General
Approach (see above), i.e. responsibility rests with the work package
leadership and following the procedures of the Research Infrastructures. Work
package 4 also includes deliverables focused on user access to the underlying
infrastructure.

#  Tools

In addition to data, software tools are potential research outputs of CORBEL
that require careful management and stewardship. Indeed, provision of core
infrastructure for interoperability is a key

component of WP6 (Data access, management and integration). This includes good
quality, reliable software services. Examples of services that will be
developed in CORBEL include those for identifier management and mapping led by
ISBE, and ELIXIR will develop semantic interoperability tools such as those
for accessing ontologies and mapping data to ontologies.

ELIXIR and INSTRUCT are also developing policies for software sustainability.
This includes collaborating with the Software Sustainability Institute on
developing best practices for software development. Both infrastructures are
working to establish policies or recommendations around open development and
open source, which provides a powerful mechanism not only to disseminate the
results of publicly funded software development but also a major driver of
software quality. Although not part of CORBEL, these outputs will be available
for project partners and can benefit the implementation of CORBEL. A strong
adoption of open source already exists within the biomedical science community
but, as with data, the approach of research infrastructures and CORBEL must
respect the commercial and operational context of the participants.

#  Knowledge

Wherever appropriate, CORBEL deliverables will be published in an open fashion
and deposited in repositories such as Zenodo. Likewise, peer-reviewed articles
will be published under open-access terms. The project may also result in the
production of guidelines, standards and other documents, which will likewise
be published openly. Partners retain responsibility for choosing the
appropriate publication channel (e.g. the journal), but infrastructures can
implement mechanisms to facilitate the publication process. For example,
ELIXIR has established a gateway within F1000 Research  7  , using the post-
publication transparent review process for peer-reviewed articles, and
channels for other types of publications such as reports, posters and
slidesets.

#  **Delivery and schedule**

The delivery is delayed: Yes

It took more time than anticipated to get an overview about the existing,
actual policies from all RI’s and collect the necessary feedback.

#  **Adjustments made**

N/A