A new compliance and research data management initiative led by West Virginia University Libraries and the WVU Research Office empowers university researchers, paving the way to advances in research and science.

The he first significant step toward open science on a federal level was more than a decade ago. Today, WVU Libraries, in partnership with the WVU Research Office, empowers University researchers to navigate and excel under evolving federal mandates that require publicly funded research and data to be freely accessible to all.

Open science’s ascent

In research, terms like “open science,” “open access” and “public access” are often used interchangeably, but each has a distinct meaning. Open access is a publishing model that allows authors to retain rights while enabling publishers to share their research freely. 

Open science, on the other hand, focuses on making scientific research accessible to all and aligns with federal efforts to ensure public access to federally funded research without barriers.  

Despite these differences, their shared goal is to remove barriers and make knowledge freely available, fostering discovery, innovation and equitable access to information for all.  

Federal initiatives like the White House Office of Science, Technology and Policy’s (OSTP) 2013 Holdren memorandum and 2022 Nelson memorandum, and the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) data management and sharing policy, set the scene for and supported increased public access to results of research funded by the U.S. federal government. 

These initiatives also better enable research results validation, promoting sharing of scientific data, accelerating research discovery, providing accessibility to high-value datasets and promoting data reuse. 

Why open science?

“Research data management and sharing data makes for good science and it makes for good research,” said Jonah McAllister-Erickson, assistant university librarian in WVU Libraries’ Research Support & Engagement (RSE) Department. “There is a well-known reproducibility crisis in research. Difficulties in replicating results of published research threatens the credibility of science and when research cannot be reliably accessed and reproduced, it undermines the public’s trust in scientific findings.”  

A 2024 pre-print analysis published on Open Science Framework found one in seven published scientific papers has some degree of data manipulation or underlying fraudulence. 

By expanding open science to include sharing data, it becomes easier to scrutinize and validate findings, identify errors or misconduct and ensure higher standards of integrity in research. Coupled with preservation in a public repository, publicly sharing data enhances future research, becoming accessible and usable for subsequent research and expediting discovery. 

“Academic libraries in general have been advocates and champions of open science as our role is to get as much information as we can into the hands of those who need it. WVU Libraries is helping to build a culture of shared science and research on campus in several ways.” Dean of WVU Libraries Karen Diaz said. “Soon, we will host a data repository to make data from research available to the public. Beyond that, we offer consultations and workshops to campus researchers. We also actively keep abreast of and participate in national and international groups developing standards, best practices and resources for open science to ensure we are offering the best advice and the best tools to our researchers.”

WVU Libraries and the WVU Research Office join forces 

In 2022, with the first rollout of federal data sharing mandates quickly approaching, a committee of WVU research stakeholders was formed to translate NIH guidance into operational University policy and infrastructure.

The Data Management Sharing Committee’s goal: to support WVU researchers in meeting new grant proposal requirements, increasing the likelihood of acceptances in receiving funding for research.

After a needs analysis led by Rosemary Casteel, chair and WVU Research Office’s director of research systems and operational research data service, the committee discovered ensuring data sharing compliance would require new processes, guidance, training, services and roles. Needs included establishing a consulting service, training for data management tooling and ensuring services and guidance for data management throughout the research life cycle were available. 

“There was a real void within the campus around who was going to be responsible for explaining these policies,” McAllister-Erickson said. “Who was going manage the necessary tools?”

“A committee supporting research data management and sharing like the Data Management and Sharing Committee has never existed at WVU,” Casteel said. “The DMS Committee is comprised of WVU’s Libraries, Information Technology Services, West Virginia Clinical and Translational Science Institute, Research Office departments and department and college pre-award staff. Representations from these areas will ensure WVU is prepared and can be proactive. The funding agencies’ data sharing, management, protection, privacy and cybersecurity requirements change continually. The committee allows us to make decisions, obtain input and effectively communicate with the research community.”  

The DMS Committee developed processes, services and roles in support of the new data management and sharing policy that went into effect on January 25, 2023. The new processes and services included reviewing data management and sharing plans, as well as training and consultations. A key component was to ensure allowable costs for data storage, management, curation, publication and repositories were included in the budget and that the data management and sharing plans were compliant. WVU Libraries, ITS, WV CTSI and the Research Office worked directly with researchers to ensure compliance with the new policy. 

Of the total number of proposals sent to NIH by WVU researchers, 60% requested a consultation and/or review of their data management sharing plan, speaking to the large number of WVU researchers seeking help with navigating compliance.

“We appreciate Jonah McAllister-Erickson and his colleagues. Jonah walks us through the steps of developing a data management and sharing plan,” said Ubolrat Piamjariyakul, PhD, RN, associate dean of research and scholarship of the WVU School of Nursing. “With his expertise and guidance, we develop data management plans using research systems and workflows that comply with institutional research and information security policies and protocols. When we followed his instruction on developing a comprehensive plan, NIH complimented our recent R1 research proposal, which received funding by the National Institute of Nursing.” 

“The role of WVU Libraries is essential to compliance for public access. They are vital for direct support for the research community related to data management and sharing plans, tooling and general publication support,” Casteel said. “Maintaining sufficient resources in our Libraries and increasing research data management services will be critical for WVU.”  

“We were already advocates of and involved with open science through the WVU Libraries Research Repository,” McAllister-Erickson said. “So, there’s a natural connection for the Libraries to help University researchers in this way.”

The role of WVU Libraries is essential to compliance for public access. They are vital for direct support for the research community related to data management and sharing plans, tooling and general publication support. Rosemary Casteel, DMS committee chair director, research systems and operational research data service, WVU Research Office 

Open science expands visibility and research impact

The ripples of recent and emerging public access mandates, and the efforts of the Data Management Sharing Committee to meet resulting campus needs, do not stop at proposal review and submission compliance. Now more than two years after the NIH data management and sharing policy went into effect, some of the first federally funded research to be impacted by public access mandates have been awarded and are closing out projects.

Research outputs and supporting data now need to be made available to the public immediately and equitably. This does not only benefit the public, but researchers and WVU’s standing as an R1 institution.

“These efforts support improved discovery, visibility and impact for researchers’ work, enhancing University reputation and ultimately student and regional scientific and academic opportunities,” said Emily Fidelman, head of metadata services in WVU Libraries’ Knowledge Access and Resource Management (KARM) Department. “By enriching open science materials on Libraries’ platforms with metadata, we not only acquire it, in a sense, we make it discoverable and more likely to be used by our constituents.”   

WVU Libraries’ KARM Department augments the University’s open science efforts by working with and bolstering metadata about published research outputs and supporting data. Metadata, often described as “data about data,” serves as essential information that describes and organizes research materials, making them easier to locate and understand. By prioritizing focus on increasing engagement with open science materials via metadata best practices, KARM’s expertise and efforts make it easier for researchers, students and the public to find relevant open-science materials when searching online. 

“When materials are easier to locate, more West Virginians and the research community can use them, which amplifies the impact of WVU-authored research. We’re making WVU research more than just publicly available, we’re making it findable, useful and impactful,” Fidelman said. “We aid open science research and supporting data, lending WVU’s open science and scholarship visibility, credibility and impact by creating, harvesting, enriching, transforming and analyzing metadata. All while also teaching researchers, faculty and students how to assign metadata and find openly published work and datasets that researchers can reuse.”

The future of open science at WVU Libraries 

While all federal agencies comply with data sharing mandates over the next year, more and more private research funders are also requiring research outputs and supporting data to be shared. WVU Libraries will continue to commit resources toward research data management and sharing and is in the process of recruiting additional expertise to provide more support for researchers in data analysis and other steps of the research life cycle.  

“We will be able to assist researchers with more aspects of their data life cycle,” McAllister- Erickson said. “We can help think about the arrangement, description and analysis of researcher’s data, making sure they have good data going into their research. We can help them, not just with the selection of a repository, but with their preparation for depositing their data in that open science repository.” 

Both reproducibility of research and reusability of existing data leverages resources more efficiently, making open science a worthwhile endeavor. But the next challenge is outreach and capacity. Public access policies continuously change and effectively communicating those changes, along with supplying relevant Libraries resources and services, across WVU’s researchers is an ongoing, consistent and demanding process .

WVU Libraries is one of many campus partners who contribute to the open science ecosystem. We are grateful for, and are deepening our collaboration with, the Office of Research to stay ahead of our researchers’ needs and challenges while continuing to build and evolve our services where they are needed. KAREN DIAZ, Dean, WVU Libraries