On July 8th 2022, the French Higher Education and Research Minister launched Recherche Data Gouv, its ecosystem for sharing and opening up research data.

The first year of existence of this ecosystem has seen the structuring of data support services. Labelled Data Management Clusters are one of the components of the ecosystem and represent a powerful tool for consolidating support services. These Clusters are spread throughout France and provide research teams with initial local expertise in how to manage their research data rationally. The clusters are increasing in number every month through a process of calls for expressions of interest. There are now 15 data management clusters that are labelled or “on the pathway” to this status. They bring together the expertise of several institutions located on the same research site.
These clusters involve over 340 people for a total of around 85 full-time equivalents (FTEs). 73 different institutions (mainly universities, grandes écoles and research organisations) are involved in the governance and implementation of the Data Management Clusters. The services provided by the Clusters cover all stages of the data lifecycle. All these Clusters offer a range of over 140 services covering general or thematic subjects, user guidance, how to draft data management plans or assistance with depositing in a data repository.

A year after its launch the multidisciplinary Recherche Data Gouv repository hosts over 2000 datasets. This corresponds to 36,000 data files that are either fully open or shared with restricted access if the nature of the data requires this. Around 288,500 files have been downloaded since July 8th 2022.
France’s public research organisations and institutions can set up their own institutional spaces within the national repository. Thirty such active institutional spaces have been created with many requested in the process of being set up. 30 training courses have been organised in the last year to support repository users, with a total of 614 participants.

Finally, a number of meetings have been organised since July 2022 to forge links between the ecosystem’s stakeholders: 

• September 14th 2022: 1st meeting of ‘labelled’ and ‘on the pathway’ Data Management Clusters
• March 13th and 14th 2022: Repository-registry team seminar 
• March 27th 2023: Meeting of the Earth Environment System thematic reference centres and Data Management Clusters
• June 6th, 7th, 8th 2023: Residential seminar: Data Management Clusters, thematic reference centres, institutional reference centres, etc.
• Many speeches and presentations on the ecosystem at different national events like the ‘2023 ‘Printemps de la donnée’ event

Recherche Data Gouv was part of the second National Plan for Open Science and will be fully funded for the first three years by the National Fund for Open Science.