• e-infrastructure project. Indicate which H2020 e-infrastructure project you represent.

LEARN (LEaders Activating Research Networks)

• Relevance. Provide measures of the usage of the services provided by your e-infrastructure and improvement over time. For example, traffic growth on the networks, usage of supercomputing facilities etc. 

LEARN will hold Workshops in all partner sites - UK, Austria, Finland, Catalan Region, and Chile inviting all stakeholders (librarians and IT specialists, researchers, research funders, policy and decision makers) to engage with the fundamentals of research data management (RDM). Attenders to date. London 83; Vienna: 55; Helsinki: 60

• Effectiveness. Provide benchmarks comparing your e-infrastructure against e-infrastructures in other scientific powerhouses such as USA, China and Japan

LEARN does not per se provide technical infrastructure. It is a support programme for those new to RDM. Levels of takeup of the RDM self-assessment tool LEARN has developed are reported under Efficiency.

• Efficiency. Provide measures of the levels of exploitation of your e-infrastructure. Were things built and stand idle or are they used? You’re your e-infrastructure assist or harm private business development in an area? Some e-infrastructures are more domain specific than others – how are infrastructure needs of different sciences treated?  

A self-assessment survey, allowing users to evaluate their level of preparation for RDM, has been created. At the 31st May 2016, we received 118 valid answers from at least 24 countries. Answering to the country provenance is optional, therefore we could have received answers from other places. UK and Spain are the countries from which we received most answers. Besides Europe and Latin America, we also received  answers from Australia and the USA.

• Coherence. To what extent your e-infrastructure project supports other activities (e.g. internationalization by making infrastructures global, open access policies by proving services for open data and open science, etc.). Do you consider your e-infrastructure neutral with respect to other research priorities?

LEARN has 3 main deliverables: a model RDM policy, with guidance on how to construct and implement one; a high level multilingual executive briefing on RDM issues; a Toolkit of Best Practice Case Studies in RDM implementation. The unifying purpose of these deliverables is to address all stakeholders in the RDM chain (researchers, librarians and IT specialists, research funders, policy and decision makers) and prepare them to tackle the challenges that RDM brings. LEARN is neutral as to the benefits of Open Data versus data which carries access restrictions. LEARN lists and shows the benefits of Open Data, but also acknowledges that some data cannot be open. 'As open as possible, as closed as necessary' neatly describes the LEARN approach. Therefore, LEARN does support European, indeed global, Open Access, Open Data and Open Science initiatives.

• EU added value. Could you provide examples about how your e-infrastructure adds value at EU level?

The LEARN project is a collaboration between 5 countries in 2 continents. Through the pooling of resources and activity, LEARN avoids needless duplication of effort in the Member States. It builds on work already undertaken in Europe - especially the LERU Roadmap for Research Data (http://www.leru.org/files/publications/AP14_LERU_Roadmap_for_Research_data_final.pdf) - and expands on this report.

The RDM Self-Assessment Tool is already identifying geographical areas which are under-prepared for the 'data delugue' and those which are not yet engaging with the issues. The outcomes of LEARN will therefore inform future EU policy and guidance on RDM and Open Science and help to direct future funding streams more accurately to target known needs across the Member States.

LEARN will also prove to be an essential building block for preparation to engage with the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC), where research data can be shared and made available for re-use by any European citizen wishing so to do.