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GACR and Open Science

The Grant Agency of the Czech Republic (GACR) is actively involved in supporting Open Science and issued a public statement in this regard at the end of June.

The GACR recommends advertising a new professional position of a Data Steward or similar profession within the project to deal with the creation, coordination and management of research data, the cost of which is an eligible cost of the project.

In addition, the Article Processing Charge (APC) for open access publications and other research data management costs (e.g. related to processing, storage and anonymisation of data) related to the project are eligible costs under projects funded by the GACR.

Open Data

The GACR has included research data management in its policy for supporting grant projects:

  • all scientific publications produced under projects funded by GACR have traceable open data (with legal exceptions);
  • Open Data fulfils the FAIR principles;
  • costs associated with open data are eligible project costs;
  • GACR recommends the establishment of a data steward position within the project.

Data Management Plan

  • The data management plan (DMP) shall be submitted by the GACR project promoters no later than the date of delivery of the first partial report of the project; any updates shall be submitted in the next partial or final report on the project.
  • The requirement for a DMP submitted with the first partial report applies to projects implemented from 2025 (and later).
  • GACR recommends the Data Stewardship Wizard as one of the appropriate tools for the creation of DMPs, whose institutional instance – the CAS FAIR Wizard is available to all researchers from the CAS.

Open Access to publications

GACR recommends the use of Open Access form of publishing, as it leads to greater usability of new knowledge and thus also to increased efficiency of resources spent on project solutions.

  • GACR supports Open Access in all its formats, i.e. Green Open Access, Gold Open Access and Diamond Open Access.
  • Grant funds can be used to cover the costs of open access publishing.
  • Open Access publishing is recommended, but not mandatory for researchers of projects funded by GA CR. The main criteria should be scientific excellence and quality of peer review.

For more details on the individual points, read this appendix document from GACR website here.