Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they plan to take to ensure that palaeographic genetic data is kept in the public domain.

Her Majesty’s Government supports the management of and access to research data, so that it can be widely used for research and innovation. The UK Research and Development Roadmap (copy attached) published last year emphasised the importance of data and open research.

The UK enjoys a well-established infrastructure and policy framework for good research data management and access, covering multiple disciplines, including national data centres such as the National Geosciences Data Centre. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the UK’s largest public research funder, requires those in receipt of funding from Research Councils to ensure “that all parties engaged in the research make every reasonable effort to ensure that intellectual assets obtained in the course of the research, whether protected by intellectual property rights or not, are used for the benefit of society and the economy”.

UKRI and its Research Councils have policies that set out expectations and guidance on sharing and managing research data. It has a common set of principles on research data, including that publicly funded research data are a public good, produced in the public interest, which should be made openly available with as few restrictions as possible in a responsible manner. UKRI in partnership with research organisations developed the Concordat on Open Research Data to ensure that the research data gathered and generated by members of the UK research community is made available for use by others wherever possible.

UKRI work closely with international bodies to enable global sharing and access to data in the interest of the economy and society. Recently the OECD’s Recommendation on Access to Research Data from Public Funding was updated and this will guide further policy and support in the UK as well as across all OECD members.