RESEARCH facilities and data sharing

The Baltic Sea countries own and operate a considerable amount of research infrastructures. For BONUS, the most crucial are research vessels as well as marine and coastal field research stations. BONUS encourages joint use of these infrastructures by providing an inventory of the facilities available and by coordinating communication between infrastructure owners. By providing research facilities in kind for the use of BONUS the participating states will also increase total funding volume of the programme for the benefit of the Baltic Sea.

BONUS follows a data policy which is based on the principle that publicly funded research data should be used for the public interest and therefore be openly available to the maximum extent possible. In particular, the aim is to ensure that the results and data follow the standards of the European Marine Observation and Data Network In short, this means that

securing high quality of the data produced by BONUS projects is obligatory

data is shared without any delays within the programme

data is stored in publicly available data bases

results are published in open access publication fora

All BONUS projects are requested to include a data management plan in the research proposals. The adequacy of the plan is part of one of the criteria in the proposal evaluation. The BONUS Secretariat maintains a metadata base of all data produced within the programme.