63 Chapter Eight Fostering Open Science Practice through Recognising and Rewarding Research Data Management and Curation Skills Joy Davidson Digital Curation Centre, UK Email: joy.davidson@glasgow.ac.uk Review status: peer reviewed How has the research landscape changed in the UK? Not too long ago, researchers primarily needed to worry about securing grant income, doing their research, and publishing their find- ings in an appropriate, subject specific journal. The process was straight-forward and there was little need to report activity in detail at the insti- tutional level. However, with the advent of the Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) back in 2008, things began to change as research publication metrics relating to both quantity and quality had to be produced by participating Higher Educa- tion Institutions (HEIs). The RAE was: conducted jointly by the Higher Edu- cation Funding Council for England (HEFCE), the Scottish Funding Council (SFC), the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) and the Department for Employment and Learning, Northern Ireland (DEL). The primary purpose of the RAE 2008 was to produce quality profiles for each submission of research activity made by institutions (HEFCE, SFC, HEFCW & DEL. 2008). In the run up to RAE 2008, many HEIs intro- duced institutional repositories and associated deposit policies to make the reporting process more accurate and efficient. A few years later, the emergence of Research Councils UK’s Common Principles on Research Data Policy (RCUK, 2011) placed further demands upon researchers in terms of managing and sharing outputs to make research more accountable, open, and reusable. As part of this new landscape, data management plans (DMPs) are now required at the grant appli- cation stage by the majority of Research Councils UK (RCUK) funders. The only exception is the En- gineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) who do not want to see a DMP alongside the grant application but assume that one will ex- ist locally. Bill Hubbard, Director of the Centre for Research Communications at the University of Nottingham, has captured the increasing com- plexity of the changing research landscape in Fig- ure 1. The majority of RCUK funders place the onus on researchers to provide evidence that research data management and sharing are being consid- ered from the outset of new projects via the com- pletion of a data management plan (DMP). How- ever, things changed when EPSRC released its Policy Framework on Research Data in 2011. The policy included nine expectations for those in re- ceipt of - or seeking to be in receipt of - EPSRC funding. Crucially, EPSRC placed the onus on the research institution to demonstrate that suitable infrastructure was in place rather than on the in- dividual researcher. The deadline for compliance with EPSRC’s nine expectations came into effect on May 1, 2015 and, in early June of the same year, a light-touch survey was issued to senior management in UK HEIs to assess progress. EPSRC’s policy has been absolutely instrumental in unlocking institutional funding for the devel- opment of fledgling RDM support services and systems and has had practical implications for both researchers and support staff. The follow up to the 2008 RAE - the Research Excellence Frame-