A five person team working under the auspices of RDAP updated the content of the SPARC (Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition) data sharing resource. This is a community resource that allows for tracking, understanding, and comparison of current U.S. federal funder research data sharing policies. By updating the content, these efforts sustain the resource as a useful tool for data management professionals, especially those supporting US government-funded research.  

The group includes:

• Jonathan Petters, Virginia Tech (Team lead)

• Hannah Calkins, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia

• Patricia Condon, University of New Hampshire

• Rachel Woodbrook, University of Michigan

• Reid Boehm, University of Houston

This updating project started in January 2020 and the updated content was released February 2021. The group came together around a shared desire to see this information resource sustained. This process allowed us to learn more about the nuances of the agencies, and about each other. We saw this update as a valuable endeavor for growth on many levels. The project leads to more collaboration opportunities between RDAP and SPARC and the group plans to write a manuscript comparing and contrasting the content in policy facets across the agencies giving a picture of the changes and trends over the last 5 years. To read more, visit the SPARC newsletter https://sparcopen.org/news/. More  information about the process and content for each agency is available on the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/C4PD8.