Die RUB erweitert ihre zentralen Services für die Speicherung von Forschungsdaten. © RUB, Marquard

Services A new home for research data

RUB is currently setting up structures for the management of research data from all disciplines. A prototype software version for the storage of research data is ready. Now, the university is looking for testers.

Literature analysis, MRI images, speed measurements – research data can take many forms. In the interest of transparency in science, the data should be made accessible to the scientific community, regardless of the discipline from which it originates. In order to provide the best possible support to researchers, RUB is currently setting up a system for research data management that will be open to members of all faculties. The software developed for this purpose will be available in a beta version at the end of November 2022. The team of the research data management working group is looking for volunteers to test the system and help shape the final development steps by providing feedback.

Participate

RUB members who are interested in the project can register for the test phase until 21 November 2022 by sending an email to rdms+betatest@rub.de. All testers will receive an introduction to the system. Anyone who’d like to learn more about the software first is welcome to attend a Zoom meeting on research data management at RUB on 16 November 2022. You can find more information online.

“The development of a central system for the management of research data in accordance with the FAIR principles is an important milestone towards sustainable digital infrastructures at RUB,” says Professor Günther Meschke, Vice Rector for Research and Transfer. Researchers can store raw data in the system and describe it with metadata to enable other groups to use the data likewise. The goal is to facilitate long-term data storage and to ensure that the data will still be readable and understood in ten years’ time.

FAIR principles

The acronym FAIR stands for findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable – four qualities that research data should ideally fulfil:

Findable: The data should be labelled with metadata in such a way that both humans and computers can easily find it.
Accessible: The data should be easily accessible to authorised groups of people.
Interoperable: It should be possible to understand the data in a different context.
Reusable: The major goal of the FAIR principles is that data, once obtained, can be reused – to bring it together with other data sets and to analyse it anew, for example. To this end, it must be adequately described and the ways in which it can be used must be indicated.

Links

Research data guidelines