Standards and Guidelines

Please consider existing guidelines during data management planning and active data management:

• Guidelines for Research Data Management at ETH Zurich, RSETHZ 414.2
• ETH Zurich Guidelines on scientific integrity, RSETHZ 414 (for data management planning see specifically articles 10 and 11)
• ETH Compliance
  
• ETH Zurich's Open Access Policy
• The ETH Zurich's legal collection and the IT Services documents and publications as well as the ETH website about Information Security provide datasheets on other relevant topics, including:
  • IT Guidelines and IT Baseline Protection Rules of ETH Zurich
  • ETH Zurich Acceptable Use Policy for Information and Communications
  • Directive on “Information Security at ETH Zurich”
  • Merkblatt über Immaterialgüterrechte von Angehörigen der ETH Zürich (Datasheet on Intellectual Property Rights of Members of ETH Zurich - in German only)

The Legal Office and ETH Zurich’s technology transfer office (ETH transfer) will be happy to assist in the event of any legal queries. For ethical questions, your first port of call is ETH Zurich’s Ethics Commission, which may refer you to other responsible offices (including the Commission for Good Scientific Practice, ombudspersons, the Animal Welfare Officer and others) at ETH Zurich.

The open-access policies of research funders such as the SNSF or Horizon 2020 require you to publish your findings from the funded projects in freely-accessible publications or repositories.

Further details on the policies of research funders can be found at

• Open Access to Publications (Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF)
• Open Access to Publications (Horizon Europe)
• More information on open access at ETH Zurich (external link)

The open research data policies of research funders seek to make research data as freely accessible as possible to both the scientific community and the public at large.

Further details on the policies of research funders can be found at

• Open Research Data (Swiss National Science Foundation SNSF)
• Open access to Research Data (Horizon Europe)

One implementation measure associated with these open research data policies is the preparation of Data Management Plans (DMPs) by researchers.

Open research data policies of research funders usually take as their basis the FAIR Data Principles. These summarise prerequisites which make research data “findable”, “accessible”, “interoperable” and “reusable”.

They were drawn up in 2016 by various stakeholders from the fields of research, industry, research funding and academic publishers (DOI: http://doi.org/ 10.1038/sdata.2016.18).

As far as research data management and data management planning are concerned, the overarching goal should always be to make research data FAIR, thus ensuring they are prepared for further use by humans and machines in an optimum manner. This video supports you in achieving this goal.

A list of repositories recommended by the SNSF can be found on its webpage.