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With increasing amounts of generated research data, relevant for saving and sharing, as well as higher demands on more open and transparent research, research data management has become an important issue for all involved in the research community. Open access to research data is promoted using arguments concerning public good, research transparency and quality control, the bringing of new research questions, and extended collaboration among researchers. A large part of the responsibility for the research data management falls on the research or university libraries. Therefore, the aim of this study is to examine the attitude towards and the conditions for open research data on an institutional level – what requirements and guidelines there are, what motives there are for these guidelines, and what stakeholders are involved. The aim is also to compare these requirements and guidelines to those presented by important research funders and academic publishers, to see how compatible they are. This is done by analysing research data management policies from 17 European universities, as well as four publishers of academic journals and four research funders operating in Europe. The analysis takes on a sociotechnical systems theory perspective and focuses on identifying patterns in the policies' purpose descriptions, their definitions and views of research data, their attitudes towards data sharing and reuse, and their requirements and recommendations regarding open data. The study showed a generally positive attitude towards open data among the institutional policies, although clear, concrete instructions were lacking. For the most part policies encouraged data sharing, but the decision was left up to the individual researcher or research group. The compatibility with funders' and publishers' data sharing policies appears to be dependent on research discipline, and can vary between different combinations of research institution, funder and journal. However, many institutio