A European compass for transporting personal data on the new silk road

Abstract

In the new era of Open Science, the European Union strongly promotes that all sorts of data should be able to roam freely within the academic world (LERU 2018). A free flow of data enables researchers to not only check and verify each other’s work—and thereby to enhance the quality of their work—but also to set up (international) collaborations in which multiple institutions and research communities can benefit from the same data sets. Moreover, data are a key asset in setting up successful research collaborations: not only are they the fuel and catalyst of innovative research, but the sharing of data is also a sign of mutual confidence and respect (Buttarelli 2016).