The NLS’s research projects continuously produce new important research data as a result of our active research activities. The NLS requires responsible research data life cycle management in research projects. Offering open access to the research data supports the results of research, produces new publications, and promotes the social impact of research. The research data is as open as possible and as closed as necessary.
FAIR principles
The National Land Survey of Finland recommends following the FAIR principles in managing research data. In accordance with the FAIR principles, the data must be findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable. To uphold these principles, a persistent identifier (such as URN, DOI, Handle, ORCID, etc.) must be obtained for the data and its metadata. These allow for the digital material to be easily identified, linked to and transferrable to other services.
Life cycle of data management
Management of research data is part of responsible science. The funders of research also often have their own requirements for managing research data.
The data management of the National Land Survey of Finland’s research has a few basic stages:
- The data management starts with planning the research data management, with the help of the DMPTuuli tool.
- During the planning stage, we will identify the materials that can later be published or that must be stored.
- We document the data well throughout the research process.
- We provide descriptions of the research data in connection to publishing, making them findable for everyone in the future.
- We aim to describe and publish also the metadata of such materials that cannot be made available to everyone.
Services for data management and publishing research data
The information services of the National Land Survey of Finland give advice and guidance on using the Fairdata services and the DMPTuuli tool, help compile the data management plans and give comments on the plans, if necessary.
We encourage our researchers to use the Fairdata services provided by CSC, as long as their use is possible regarding the data used. Research data published with the help of Fairdata services and the metadata of the research data will also be available for viewing via the Research.fi portal.
Support for expertise in openness of research data
The National Land Survey regularly holds training sessions of researcher skills, which includes the practices of research data management. In addition to this, research groups may order tailored training for open science and data management from us, openscience@nls.fi.
The National Land Survey of Finland utilises nationally produced open education materials for developing the competence of researchers. Increasing in-depth competence is based on the researcher and their needs.
Among other tools, we use:
• A Data Management handbook compiled by the Finnish Social Science Data Archive
• The public online courses of open science and research data management and their recordings by Aalto University
• The training courses offered by CSC
• Research data management self-study course by CSC