Open research data

The SNSF, like other major funding agencies, expects research data to be freely accessible to everyone — to scientists as well as to the general public — provided there are no legal, ethical, copyright or other issues.

The MARVEL Research Data Management Strategy was written in 2019, and updated in 2022. In particular, it states that the data underlying publications have to be deposited on the Materials Cloud Archive at the latest at the same time as publication, with no additional costs for the groups. Hosting files on the Materials Cloud Archive is a requirement of the funding agencies, but this also makes the data citable (with DOI), takes care of long-term preservation of the data for 10+ years, boosts visibility of your research, and increases your citation count. Simulations run with AiiDA can get also a Materials Cloud Explore section so that the data is shared according the FAIR principles and is fully reproducible.

You will find more information about how using Materials Cloud Archive to deposit research data in the presentation below by MARVEL PI Giovanni Pizzi at the MARVEL seminar on open science and open access (June 17, 2021), with associated slides available here. 

On the MARVEL website, the dataset index lists all published datasets resulting from NCCR MARVEL research. It is updated every year, in February.

Regarding data storage and backup during research, MARVEL offers central storage for computational members at CSCS on "/store". Local storage within the institutions and the research groups is also possible, keeping in mind the importance of backups and backup retention. MARVEL requests at least weekly backups. It recommends a three-month backup retention, but accepts as a minimum a one-month backup retention. The EPFL Library reminds us of the horror of lost data in a humorous story.

The data manager is Lidia Favre-Quattropani, MARVEL scientific manager. The MARVEL data team, with one representative per project, is at your disposal to address questions regarding open research data policy within MARVEL, with the roles of being the point of contact in your group, project, institution; of raising awareness on data management; and of checking the minimal requirements presented in the MARVEL research data strategy.