Open Research Data

For funded applications, grantees have to submit a DMP via the platform mySNF to request the release of funds. Individually generated DMPs are not accepted.

Information about the standard contents of the DMPs required by the SNSF can be found on the SNSF webpage for Open Research Data.

The standard contents of the DMPs (PDF)

The DMP is only requested for funded applications and is not part of the scientific evaluation. Nevertheless, the submission of a DMP is a condition for the release of funds. All questions raised in the DMP guidelines must be addressed to comply with the SNSF Open Research Data requirements. The DMPs are assessed by the SNSF administrative offices. Missing or inaccurate statements need to be added/revised at the latest before the release of the payment of the second instalment. Researchers are requested to update their DMP at the end of the grant.

Yes. DMPs are dynamic and can be updated on mySNF during the entire funding period. The DMP cannot be modified any longer once the final scientific report has been accepted.

Many examples and descriptions of DMPs can be found on the website of the Digital Curation Centre. Other examples are provided by the Swiss DLCM project.

• Digital Curation Centre
• Swiss DLCM

The SNSF expects its funded researchers to share at least all data underlying a publication, meaning that these data have to be directly and freely available and deposited on a FAIR data repository. Shared data must enable other researchers to reproduce the published study.

For more information, please refer to the SNSF guidelines.

Open Research Data: SNSF issues guidelines for data management plan

SNSF funded researchers are expected to openly share all data needed to make their publication reproducible. Hence, data presented in a publication has to be shared. Data that is not necessary to reproduce the results presented in a publication does not have to be shared.

Yes. Researchers decide whether they want to share additional data they have worked on and generated in the course of their research work, unless they are subject to legal, ethical, copyright, confidentiality or other constraints.

Some data may be subject to legal, ethical, copyright, confidentiality or other constraints. Such restrictions must be clearly described and justified in the DMP. They will be reviewed by the SNSF Administrative Offices. Embargo periods are only possible under exceptional circumstances and based on the aforementioned constraints.

If data cannot be shared for well-justified reasons, the SNSF still expects the metadata (authors, data sets description, PID, etc.), as well as data documentation (e.g. readme files, code) and software (if applicable), to be published on a data repository complying with the FAIR Data Principles.

Sensitive data does not preclude sharing, unless the rights and privacy of the subjects cannot be protected. Before initiating a study, which will generate or include sensitive data, carefully consider the study design, the informed consent documents and the structure of the resulting data. There are repositories that can handle sensitive data.

Researchers funded by the SNSF are expected to make all data underlying a publication publicly accessible on a data repository complying with the FAIR data principles as soon as their publication is available. Many data repositories offer to pre-register and to reserve DOIs for data sets prior to their publication. This allows for the inclusion of the DOIs in the corresponding articles, while at the same time enabling the update of the (meta)data until the publication of the data sets.

The SNSF is aware that research data sharing takes time and money. Therefore, it allows applicants to request at the time of submission funding for the preparation of research data in view of its archiving, and to the archiving itself in data repositories complying with the FAIR data principles. However, the SNSF contributes to these archiving costs only on the basis of a one-time payment at the time of data upload on the repository. The SNSF does not cover any subsequent costs. The SNSF may allocate up to CHF 10,000 for these activities. The costs must be charged to a running grant and cannot be covered by a supplementary grant.

Yes. Research communities that want to discuss best-practices in connection with open research data issues (e.g. how to best write a DMP, which data formats to employ, which repositories are most suitable, etc.) can apply for SNSF support under the new funding scheme "Scientific Exchanges".

Please contact us at ord@snf.ch

​The DMP has to be written in the same language as the research plan.

The SNSF incorporated the preservation of research data in its policy on Open Research Data. However, the SNSF does not define a specific timeframe, since this can vary between disciplines or research topics. As a general rule, the SNSF recommends to store research data for 10 years.

​Github is a well-suited platform for code sharing but it is not a data archiving tool. Therefore, a copy of the code has to be archived on a data repository. For instance, you can set up a connection between Zenodo and Github to ensure the permanent record of your code and make it citable.

Github guidelines

Yes. In any case, researchers are requested to update their DMP at the end of the grant. In this final version, the SNSF expects that the management of the data, which was collected, generated and observed during the course of the project, is described conclusively. If the collection, generation or observation of some data could not yet be completed, this can be specified and explained in the DMP. In any case, the publication of the data on a data repository, which complies with the FAIR Data Principles, must be planned at the end of the project. In case data sharing is not possible, the reasons need to be documented explicitly in the final DMP (e.g. why any identifying information from the data cannot be removed, which ethical or legal agreements would be violated by releasing the data, etc.). The final DMP will be assessed together with the final scientific report. The SNSF Administrative Offices retain the right to request additional information and/or amendments to the contents of the final DMP.

The SNSF expects that all necessary documentation (metadata, code, etc.) and/or other specific tools are made available to facilitate reproducibility of the publication or reuse of the data. This also applies to software.