Maredata, thematic network of open research data 

The Superior Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) and six Spanish universities have worked together to launch Maredata, a national thematic network which stores open research data for being reused by other stakeholders interested in scientific information.

The University of Barcelona is the centre responsible for coordinating this project, in which the following academic institutions take part: the Carlos III University, the University of Alicante, the Open University of Catalonia, the Institute of Agricultural Chemistry and Food Technology (IATA-CSIC), Ingenio and UISYS, CSIC entities attached to the University of Valencia.

Financed by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, the network boosts open science in Spain, guaranteeing unrestricted access to research data from public funding and promoting the participation of the national community in the Pilot Project on Open Research Data sponsored by Horizon 2020. Moreover, two of the goals of this initiative are the development of new research areas and the collaboration between open data and open science communities, making recommendations to help other institutions open their scientific results.

Open science makes the results from scientific research and methodologies as well as data obtained from them be distributed, reused and accessible for free. Creating new business models, building products or services, developing new investigation lines or even validating the quality of science produced in the country are just a few examples of the potential and benefits that research data provide for all levels of citizenship.

For these reasons, government agents want to value this information and promote Maredata thematic network. After all, universities and research centers are public entities and play an essential role in society; so they should be consolidated as open bodies which, thanks to the data stored and produced in different academic fields (teaching, research ...), will help increase awareness and public participation.

Aware of the relevance of academic data, the Spanish university has already several institutions which, through their own open data sites, make accessible their information to the society and publish their action plan as the University of Alicante has done, which, apart from participating in Maredata network, has published a book about its open data ecosystem that shows  the experience of the University of Alicante in the process of implementing its open data policy.

Thanks to these initiatives, the open university and the access to research data are already a reality; which not only supports the sharing and reuse of information but facilitates making decisions based on academic information and generates opportunities for collaboration among the different society actors.