Budget support and policy/political dialogue : Donor practices in handling (political) crises

Budget support entered the aid scene at the turn of the millennium and it is considered as the aid modality par excellence to foster ownership and more effective aid through institutional reform. In 2008-2009 a number of political events in aid receiving African countries however pointed at the difficult relation between budget support and (political) governance. The paper analyzes donor policies and practices surrounding policy/political dialogue and budget support and offers a number of policy recommendations on where and how to deal with “political” issues. Based on a desk study carried in March-May 2010 at the request of the Belgian Directorate-General for Development Cooperation, the paper presents a substantial analysis of Mozambique and Zambia where two recent political crises were successfully resolved by five donor countries. The authors argue that using budget support to drive both democratic and economic change is hazardous. Acknowledging the synergy between policy and political dialogue, the paper posits that technocratic and democratic issues should be separated because there are obvious trade-offs between them. Democratic governance issues should be dealt with in a separate high level forum, and in a pro-active rather than reactive way. In addition, donors need to ensure their interventions do not undermine recipient countries efforts to democratize. In effect, they should lower their ambitions: 1) with regard to what they can do: change cannot be bought, it can only be supported; 2) with regard to what recipient governments can do: even when there is commitment, change is most often gradual, not in big leaps. If anything, politics and political savvy should be brought in more, because every reform (however technocratic) is profoundly political.

EOSC Synergy WP6: Initial review of systems, initiatives and development of selection criteria of the online learning/training platforms and initiatives

This report describes a review of possible learning platforms and tools, and relevant previous and current projects and initiatives in the area of Open Science and EOSC training and education. It also includes reflections on the criteria we will use to select the platform and tools for the EOSC-Synergy project.European Commission. The report is a deliverable of EOSC-synergy project (INFRAEOSC-05(b)), Grant agreement ID: 857647.Peer reviewe

From Conceptualization to Implementation: FAIR Assessment of Research Data Objects

Funders and policy makers have strongly recommended the uptake of the FAIR principles in scientific data management. Several initiatives are working on the implementation of the principles and standardized applications to systematically evaluate data FAIRness. This paper presents practical solutions, namely metrics and tools, developed by the FAIRsFAIR project to pilot the FAIR assessment of research data objects in trustworthy data repositories. The metrics are mainly built on the indicators developed by the RDA FAIR Data Maturity Model Working Group. The tools’ design and evaluation followed an iterative process. We present two applications of the metrics: an awareness-raising self-assessment tool and an automated FAIR data assessment tool. Initial results of testing the tools with researchers and data repositories are discussed, and future improvements suggested including the next steps to enable FAIR data assessment in the broader research data ecosystem

FAIRsFAIR M4.3 CoreTrustSeal+FAIRenabling, Capability and Maturity

This milestone (M4.3) document updates the previous CoreTrustSeal+FAIR Overview and the Draft Maturity Model Based on Extensions and-or Additions to CoreTrustSeal Requirements (M4.2). The latter document provides extensive context and references component documents that provide the foundation for this work. The authors would like to thank the CoreTrustSeal Board for their valuable feedback on a pre-publication version of this text including alignments and target capabilities. The authors acknowledge that while recommending that repositories adopt this approach, no formal adoption and integration into the CoreTrustSeal requirements or processes can take place outside the scheduled, periodic community review process

FAIRsFAIR D4.5 Report on FAIR Data Assessment Toolset and Badging Scheme

Providing practical solutions for implementing FAIR principles throughout the lifecycle of research data is one of the main goals of the FAIRsFAIR project. This report provides an update of the FAIR assessment metrics developed by the task 4.5 team and describes in detail two practical tools for assessing the FAIRness of research data during data acquisition, and for data already archived in a trusted data repository. The tools are named FAIR-Aware, and F-UJI. The report also presents a badging scheme for visualising and sharing the FAIR level of individual datasets

EOSC-SYNERGY EU DELIVERABLE D6.2 Final release of the training platform including the selfdeployable tutorials capabilities, and Hackathon-as-a-Service platform

This document is a formal deliverable which records the final state of the EOSC Synergy Learning Platform and Hackathon as a Service Platform that is the major outcome of the Task 6.1. The EOSC-Synergy approach to training is introduced, followed by the motivation of the choices made for the platform. The detailed analysis of the choices has been provided however as a separate report that has been published already in the initial phase of the project. A set of introductory reusable materials on open science in EOSC delivered as part of the best practices course had been described associated with Task 6.2. The technical development of the tools used on the platform is also described, giving information on deployment, integration, customisation. The report also describes the lessons learned during the course preparations and technical development.EOSC-SYNERGY receives funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 857647.Peer reviewe

From Conceptualization to Implementation: FAIR Assessment of Research Data Objects

Funders and policy makers have strongly recommended the uptake of the FAIR principles in scientific data management. Several initiatives are working on the implementation of the principles and standardized applications to systematically evaluate data FAIRness. This paper presents practical solutions, namely metrics and tools, developed by the FAIRsFAIR project to pilot the FAIR assessment of research data objects in trustworthy data repositories. The metrics are mainly built on the indicators developed by the RDA FAIR Data Maturity Model Working Group. The tools’ design and evaluation followed an iterative process. We present two applications of the metrics: an awareness-raising self-assessment tool and an automated FAIR data assessment tool. Initial results of testing the tools with researchers and data repositories are discussed, and future improvements suggested including the next steps to enable FAIR data assessment in the broader research data ecosystem

D6.3 Established Competence Centre for Variety of Communities

This report advances the establishment of a FAIR Competence Centre as outlined in the previous two reports from WP6 of FAIRsFAIR, D6.1 “Overview of needs for Competence Centre” and D.6.2 “Initial core competence centre structure”, part of FAIRsFAIR WP6 deliverables which is concerned with the development of a competence centre as a model of engagement and support for research communities. Whilst the aforementioned reports focused, the first on the analysis of the landscape of available competence centres, and the second the set-up of the FAIR core competence centre, the present deliverable’s emphasis is put on the description of operations of the core competence centre, including initiatives aiming to identify synergies and areas of harmonisation that are required to support knowledge base development. This is the draft version of the deliverable not yet approved by the European Commission

D4.4 Coordination Plan for a sustainable network of FAIR-enabling Trustworthy Digital Repositories

This paper is deliverable 4.4 of FAIRsFAIR task 4.2 “Build a European network of FAIR-enabling Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDRs)” within the FAIRsFAIR Certification work package (WP4). The objective of this task is to build a European network with respect to FAIR data in FAIR-enabling repositories. In this deliverable, FAIRsFAIR advocates for and explores the idea of a European network of TDRs (now) and suggests possible future expansions in scope (later)