Open data

Open data is data that can be freely used, reused and redistributed by anyone.

The reasons for sharing and enabling reuse of data are

  • publicly financed research should be publicly available
  • encourages scientific inquiry and debate
  • promotes innovation and potential new data uses
  • leads to new collaborations between data users and data creators
  • maximizes transparency and accountability
  • enables scrutiny of research findings
  • encourages the improvement and validation of research methods
  • reduces the cost of duplicating data collection
  • increases the impact and visibility of research
  • provides credit to the researcher as a research output in its own right
  • provides great resources for education and training

Concerns about data sharing

  • Intellectual property law
  • Data protection law
  • No Open Data policy in Estonia
  • „The others do not understand my data“
  • Lack of time and money for data management
  • No incentives for researchers
  • Conflicts of interests between academia and business

"Knowledge-based Estonia" : Estonian Research and Development and Innovation Strategy 2014-2020 points out that open access to publicly funded research results and data should be encouraged.

In the beginning of 2016 Estonian Research Council published the document: Open Science in Estonia: Open Science Expert Group of the Estonian Research Council Principles and Recommendations for Developing National Policy, where Estonia’s strategic objective 2020 is formed: 

The academic community is familiar with and accepts the principles of open science and open data.
Research data collected with the support of public funding are freely accessible and re-usable to all, if
not restricted by legal requirements. Research data are preserved in open repositories which meet
certain standards and are made available at the earliest opportunity.

More information and support on Open Science is available on the website of UT Library: