The Consortium strongly believes in the concepts of open science, and in the benefits that the European innovation ecosystem and economy can draw from allowing the reuse of data at a larger scale. DTOceanPlus will develop and demonstrate an open source integrated suite of second generation design tools for ocean energy technologies supporting the entire technology innovation process. The open source licence under which these tools will be distributed will allow free access to all interested parties. As a user progresses through the stages of creating a design in DTOceanPlus, they will require access to reference data to support decision-making. Moreover, a database of long standing reference data will collect all the relevant information produced by the research and demonstration activities in the project.
The DTOceanPlus project participates in the Pilot on Open Research Data launched by the European Commission (EC) along with the H2020 programme. This pilot is part of the Open Access to Scientific Publications and Research Data programme in H2020. The goal of the programme is to foster access to research data generated in H2020 projects. The use of a Data Management Plan (DMP) is required for all projects participating in the Open Research Data Pilot.
The DMP covers the complete research data life cycle. It describes the types of research data that will be generated or collected during the project, the standards that will be used, how the research data will be preserved and what parts of the datasets will be shared for verification or reuse. It also reflects the current state of the Consortium agreements on data management and must be consistent with exploitation and IPR requirements. Data sharing in the open domain can be restricted as a legitimate reason to protect results that can reasonably be expected to be commercially or industrially exploited.
The DMP is not a fixed document, but will evolve during the lifespan of the project, particularly whenever significant changes arise such as dataset updates or changes in Consortium policies. The next versions of the DMP will get into more detail and describe the practical data management procedures implemented by the DTOceanPlus project.
The expected types of research data that will be collected or generated along the project lie in the following categories: 1) Components; 2) Assessments; 3) Vessels, equipment and ports. Besides, underlying data needed to validate the results presented in scientific publications will be considered insofar possible for open access publication.