Dick Schaap is the Managing Director at MARIS B.V., a company highly involved in developing and operating Marine and Oceanographic Data Management services and networks on a pan-European scale. In AQUARIUS, he leads the work on data management and open science, helping researchers turn data into long-term value for science and society. With extensive experience in enabling access to and interoperability of ocean data, Dick plays a central role in AQUARIUS to ensure that the data generated through its transnational access activities are not only collected, but also properly managed and shared, to facilitate their reuse.
Who are you and what is your role in AQUARIUS?
My name is Dick Schaap. I am from MARIS, a company that is very active in European data management, which is also why we are part of AQUARIUS. In AQUARIUS, I am leading the work package on data management and open science, which is Work Package 6.
Can you tell us what AQUARIUS is?
AQUARIUS is a large EU funded project that provides access to a wide range of research infrastructures, equipped with instrumentation used to carry out observations. As a result, it enables the collection of significant amounts of data. One of the key objectives of AQUARIUS is not only to provide transnational access to research infrastructures across Europe, but also to ensure that the data collected is safeguarded and made available for further use by a wider audience.
What is the AQUARIUS Open Data Policy and Data Management Plan?
What we aim to do in AQUARIUS is work closely with the scientific teams carrying out the Transnational Access activities, supporting them in implementing proper data management practices and ensuring that their data becomes FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable).
To achieve this, the work package I lead brings together around 16 data centres that support, guide, and educate the scientific teams in the AQUARIUS funded projects, ensuring that the data they collect will become standardised for wider public distribution and use. The open data policy in AQUARIUS is designed to guarantee a return on investment from project funding by making the collected data available as a valuable public resource.
How can scientists, including early career scientists, benefit from the AQUARIUS data management work and access to virtual research environments?
There are two steps to this. First, we see that many researchers are not fully aware of data management practices. They may have heard about FAIR, but might not know how to apply it. Therefore, we introduce them to these methodologies and to resources such as data management infrastructures in the EU, such as SeaDataNet, EurOBIS, Coriolis, and others, which feed into EMODnet and Copernicus Marine, and share with global data repositories.
Second, we stimulate what we call the knowledge chain, meaning moving from data to knowledge, which is where open science comes in. We work in synergy with Blue Cloud 2026, another EU project, and EDITO, the public infrastructure of the European Digital Twin Ocean. As part of the AQUARIUS approach, we introduce and support scientists to work with their own data and to combine it with other datasets in the Blue Cloud 2026 virtual infrastructure. In this way, they become familiar with open science practices and the added value these approaches bring to their research. Scientific teams will onboard their data to the Blue Cloud Virtual Research Environment and use its resources for computing and analytics, resulting in new knowledge.
What aspect of AQUARIUS are you most excited about?
I am very excited that open science is a core part of AQUARIUS. It will be an adventure. Scientific teams have probably heard a lot about cloud processing and collaborative environments, but may not yet have worked with them in practice. We hope this experience will have a positive impact and that they will continue to apply these approaches in their future research.
