KAPPA Programme

CZ RESEARCH Program EEA and Norway Funds 2014-2021

Beneficiaries in the KAPPA programme are required to ensure open access to all the J-type project results, i.e., peer-reviewed scientific articles, and to all underlying data related to such publications. Research data should be managed responsibly, in line with the FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable), and should be made available in line with the principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”. Beneficiaries are further required to submit a Data Management Plan within the first six months of the project where they describe what data will be created, processed and / or collected. 

You can find more detailed information about the requirements along with a guide how to fulfil them on the TA CR website. 

SIGMA Programme

The Technology Agency of the Czech Republic (TA CR) has long supported open access to scientific information. In the new Programme Sigma, you can find requirements regarding both open access to research outputs / results and research data management. 

Open access to research outputs

Beneficiaries are required to enable open access to all J-type and N-type project outputs / results and to research data that are necessary to verify the outputs / results published in open access. This is to be done in the following way: 

1. Store a machine-readable copy of the final text of the output / result (i.e., the publisher version, or the author accepted manuscript) and supporting research data in a repository.

2. Enable open access to the text of the output / result and the supporting research data, under the terms of an appropriate license, by publishing these in a repository or publishing in an open access journal. Open access must be provided within 6 months (12 months for social sciences and humanities) of the publication or the completion of the output / result, by the end of the project at the latest. 

Research data are to be shared according to the principle “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”. Beneficiaries do not need to share data in cases where their sharing could infringe on:

• Intellectual property rights 

• The right to privacy and personal data protection 

• The right to protection of trade secrets, state security, or other legitimate interests of the beneficiary (e.g., in the event of commercial use) 

If access to the supporting research data is not provided or is restricted, the beneficiary needs to justify this in the data management plan and at least metadata must be published.  

TA CR does not specify what type of license or type of access the beneficiaries should use; however, it recommends that beneficiaries do not transfer copyright to outputs / results to publishers and only grant a non-exclusive license necessary for publication. The use of Creative Commons licenses is highly recommended. 

The research output / result and research data need to be assigned a persistent identifier (e.g., DOI or handle). Persistent identifiers are typically assigned by a publisher (in the case of publications) or by a repository (in the case of research data), so when choosing a suitable repository, make sure that it assigns a persistent identifier to your data. 

Research data management 

The project proposal needs to include a description of how research data will be managed, and to provide information on the plans for sharing the research outputs / results and supporting research data.  

Beneficiaries should ensure that research data are managed in accordance with FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable).  

Furthermore, beneficiaries are obliged to prepare a data management plan for their data and submit the plan along with the first interim report. The data management plan should be updated regularly and should include the following information: 

• What data will be collected, generated or analysed?

• What methods and principles of data management will be used with respect to the FAIR principles?

• How the data will be published and shared?

• How the data will be stored during the project and how they will be preserved after the end of the project?

To create a data management plan, beneficiaries can choose between the TA CR template, or the translated template for the Horizon Europe programme. Both of these templates are provided on the Sigma Programme website among the downloadable documents for sub-objective 3 and sub-objective 2 (Czech only).