varunkothamachu

Do we actually have a nationwide repository of scientific data, a database of PhD theses or papers published through government-funded research for example? Even if a central repository does not exist, can we mandate it at an institute level?

To start, it will be useful to identify what should be part of these repositories, i.e. no data about the number of students, or the number of them who got employed, but more like staff profiles with projects they are working on, papers that they published, list of grants they secured with information about outputs from that grant, grant size, projects, electronic copies of granted PhD theses which were accessible for anyone, even outside the institute. This allows even publications to cite theses as they are accessible.

Some examples of tools/services I have come across in my previous roles were

https://researchfish.com/, a service used by UK Research Institutes for tracking outcomes from grant-funded research

https://ore.exeter.ac.uk/repository/, an example an institute level repository

https://www.nature.com/articles/sdata201618, a paper talking about The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship

https://fair-dom.org/, FAIR-DOM Association.

We can even go further deeper into specific datasets like life science data, clinical data. At this point, I am not sure what level of depth is of value to this conversation. Broad might be a good start.

Regarding the examples I share, these are definitely examples from UK, but examining them objectively should give us an idea of what we can adapt based on our requirements. If there is prior work more contextual to the indian context in terms of a policy or a prescribed data management plan, kindly share and we could build on that as it might be a better starting point.

Would love to hear your thoughts.
Varun