Towards a Culture of Data: Ten Proposals for a Research Data Policy in Social Sciences and Humanities

Abstract

International audience ; How can political roadmaps, action plans and principles on open science be translated into pragmatic and realistic research data policy on a French university campus? How can an open science ecosystem be implemented in the specific environment field of social sciences and humanities? After a couple of scientific projects on research data conducted since 2013 at the University of Lille, we carried out interviews with about 50 researchers, PhD students, data engineers, laboratory and project managers, with three objectives:1.To place the researchers at the heart of the implementation of the open science ecosystem on the campus, with their needs, priorities and doubts.2.To identify opportunities and locks for a data policy.3.To recommend ten actions to develop the data culture on the campus.Conducted as an audit on the human and social sciences campus of the University of Lille, our study has a pragmatic scope: to identify the essential elements for a coherent policy of the production, management and reuse of research data on a campus in the humanities and social sciences, and thus contribute to the appropriation of the concept of open science by the development of a "culture of the data". The national action plan states that there is still a lot of work to be done to make open science a part of scientific practice. To succeed, such an approach requires knowledge of the reality of the field; it needs the support of research communities, the coordination of all actors on the campus, and institutional and scientific steering. It will take time. But it is a necessary investment to maintain excellence in research. This paper makes ten proposals how to go there.