{"id":4901,"date":"2026-05-29T12:44:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T12:44:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/libraryresearchnews\/?p=4901"},"modified":"2026-05-29T12:44:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T12:44:08","slug":"did-you-know-that-south-africa-has-a-national-open-science-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/libraryresearchnews\/2026\/05\/29\/did-you-know-that-south-africa-has-a-national-open-science-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Did you know that South Africa has a National Open Science Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>South Africa now has a National Open Science Policy \u2014 and your Data Management Plan is key to navigating it?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In December 2025, the South African government approved a National Open Science Policy requiring that research outputs arising from public funding be made openly accessible. However, the policy is guided by the principle of &#8220;as open as possible, as closed as necessary&#8221; \u2014 recognising that sensitive, personal, or proprietary data may legitimately remain restricted. This means that openly sharing your data is encouraged where possible, but that participant consent, confidentiality obligations, and POPIA compliance always take precedence.<\/p>\n<p>A well-structured Data Management Plan (DMP) is your roadmap for navigating this balance. It helps you think through how your data will be collected, stored, shared, and preserved from the outset of your project \u2014 documenting not only what can be shared openly, but also what must remain closed and why. SunDMP, SU&#8217;s online DMP tool (available at <a href=\"https:\/\/dmp.sun.ac.za\/\">https:\/\/dmp.sun.ac.za\/<\/a>), guides you through this process step by step.<\/p>\n<p>Contact <a href=\"mailto:rdm@sun.ac.za\">Research Data Services<\/a> in the Library for support.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Africa now has a National Open Science Policy \u2014 and your Data Management Plan is key to navigating it? In December 2025, the South African government approved a National Open Science Policy requiring that research outputs arising from public funding be made openly accessible. However, the policy is guided by the principle of &#8220;as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","post-preview"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9tu3H-1h3","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/libraryresearchnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/libraryresearchnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/libraryresearchnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/libraryresearchnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/libraryresearchnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4901"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/libraryresearchnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4903,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/libraryresearchnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4901\/revisions\/4903"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/libraryresearchnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/libraryresearchnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sun.ac.za\/libraryresearchnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}