Work Plan - PL

The plan should cover a two-year period from October 2021.

Name of Working Group or Case Study: GOSC Policy and Legal Working Group

Date of the Work Plan ‘sign-off’ by the co-chairs: Dec 8, 2021

Mission Statement:

To avoid the development of large silos and to achieve the potential of global Open Science, there is interest among OSCs to seek alignment of their policies, and where possible their legal frameworks. This working group (WG) aims to identify priorities and potentials based on a brief review of Open Science policies and practices in the context of operational platforms (e.g., EOSC Rules of Participation or National Service Delivery Model at the Digital Research Alliance of Canada, CSTCloud service model in China), explore possible solutions for interoperability (e.g. legal, ethical, semantic, technical) and get them implemented in the selected case studies.

Objectives:

The general objectives for the Policy and Legal Working Group are to explore comprehensive policy gaps and solutions to facilitate the development and demonstration of different activities within the Global Open Science Cloud (GOSC) initiative, which includes but is not limited to:

1. Guiding principles to enable research facilities to collaborate and support data, services and resources to flow efficiently.

2. Policy framework based on the agreed principles for international alignment and mappings/crosswalks between policies that focus on the GOSC testbed and case studies.

3. Interoperability assumptions that specify key standards or requirements expressed in policy (in collaboration with other WGs).

4. Policy validation and adjustment in selected case studies.

5. Social network and community outreach co-building a trusted and inclusive environment for open science policy implementation.

Tasks:

1. Light-weight policy review and summary based on current work (i.e. RDA GORC WG, etc ) 

   1. Define the policy research scope, 

   2. Develop essential policy vocabulary,

   3. Identify and prioritize issues for policy study.

2. Develop guiding principles to facilitate possible alignment between open science infrastructures.

   1. Comparison of current popular principles, such as FAIR for data and research software, TRUST for data repositories, CARE for data sovereignty, to explore areas of divergence and to propose certain principles conducive to Open Science and OSCs development scenarios.

   2. Articulate how the guiding principles can help facilitate dialogue and collaboration between OSCs based on shared beliefs and values.

3. Provide guidelines, a checklist and metrics to facilitate the path towards potential GOSC activities.

4. Identify case studies and help connect Legal and Policy WG outputs as inputs for selected showcase implementation, including policy validation through case studies.

5. Hold monthly WG meetings, engage in regular communication with WG Members and the broader GOSC community, facilitate other social activities for better impact, and to seek potential policy alignment opportunities. Possible meetings may include, but are not limited to:

   1. Monthly virtual co-chair meetings;

   2. WG member meeting every month;

   3. Virtual SciDataCon 2021, 18 - 28 October 2021 (GOSC work plans presentation on 27 October. 

   4. Annual EGI Conference, 19 - 21 October 2021. Virtual. 

   5. International Data Week 2022, 20 - 23 June 2022. Hybrid, online and in Seoul. 

   6. FDO Conference and the FAIR Convergence Symposium, 24 - 28 October 2022 (exact days TBC). Leiden.

   7. First International Symposium on Open Science Clouds, Oct.2022. Hybrid, online and in Beijing.

   8. International Data Week 2023, October, Salzburg.

Deliverables: 

The WG outputs may be publicized or published as science reports, databases, checklist summaries, research papers, conference presentations, as well as others, covering the following topics:

1. Essential policy vocabulary and a list of prioritized policy issues;

2. Guiding principles facilitating collaboration on open science clouds; 

3. Policy framework for international alignment;

4. Broad communication of the WG’s outputs.

Timescales and milestones:

Impact / Influence / Dissemination

• Targeted stakeholders

The targeted audiences for the WG would be key stakeholders operating OSCs who are interested in joining the dialogue and collaboration on legal and policy issues. A wide range of stakeholders will be engaged in the policy/legal issues, so we will need to approach many and develop more targeted groups as we work on specific tasks. 

1. In Initial review: Open science stakeholders

2. In exploring guiding principles: OSCs stakeholders

3. In establishing a policy framework: OSCs stakeholders

4. In policy implementation: selected showcase stakeholders

5. In science communication: Open Science stakeholders

• Publicity, outreach and impact plan

1. Regular meetings of Co-Chairs and Members to ensure the completion of outlined tasks, and the transparency of the working process.

2. Milestone information and on-time updates via Confluence, the GOSC Initiative webpage, as well as other possible channels, when necessary, by a close tie to the GOSC SG.

3. Six-month/yearly formal reports and frequent science communication for research outputs visibility.

4. Research papers, science reports, conference presentations, and others to increase the visibility and influence of the research outputs.

5. Engagement in selected showcase(s) and other possible alignments for higher impact of the policy research.  

Working Arrangements:

Details of the available Confluence workspace will be shared with the co-chairs. Maintenance of the workspace content (e.g. addition of notes from meetings and relevant documentation) is part of the responsibilities of the Secretariat contacts.

The co-chairs are to identify active members and advise these to the CODATA Secretariat (info@codata.org). Note deactivation after 3 months of user inactivity (following flagging of the deactivation to the co-chairs).  

1. Monthly co-chair calls, initialized in September.

2. Monthly WG member calls in the first six months.

3. Regular communication with every six-month report to the GOSC SG.

4. Google Drive for communication with Confluence detailing milestones of the WG research process.

Resources:

Measuring levels of openness by data characteristics, initialized by Paul Uhlir

Examples of Open Science Clouds policy review - rules of participation, initialized by Sarah Jones