Skip to main content

About

I’ve never heard about bridgit!?​

Well, let’s change this right away and provide you with an overview: bridgit is a user-friendly software platform that simplifies common research tasks and ensures efficient, secure management of research data and metadata in one integrated environment.

Aligned with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable), bridgit enables you to:

  • prepare and annotate datasets
  • write and maintain data management plans
  • upload projects, data objects, and metadata annotations
  • connect directly with external research data services such as Zenodo or OSF to upload your data directly into the repositories

Think of bridgit as your research partner for data sharing: it supports you from the very first step of preparing and saving your data through to securely sharing it with the scientific community. All without compromising your control or exposing your data to the risk of misuse. Integrated directly into your secure university cloud, bridgit turns data management into a seamless part of your research routine.

bridgit emerged from a DFG-funded project and is administrated by the University of Münster, with the University of Potsdam as its scientific consultant. The collaboration has been so successful that bridgit was piloted in the sciebo Hochschulcloud at the University of Münster, where it proved its value in real-world academic settings and quickly began attracting the interest of other institutions.

Consciously developed as an open-source project, bridgit embodies the very same principles it promotes: just as researchers share their data for the benefit of open science, the DFG project shares bridgit openly with any institution that wishes to simplify research data sharing.

And how does it work exactly?​

You can always check our Step by Step Guide to figure out how exactly you publish your research data with bridgit. However, let’s give you an overview of what to expect:

When you first open bridgit, you will be asked to connect your preferred data repositories to establish your bridge to the research community. You then create your very own research project, which serves as the central workspace you will return to whenever you want to open, edit, or continue working on it. Each project contains your own research data and you can set up your with metadata annotations for the entire project or for individual data objects. You can also add a data management plan if needed (this is an optional feature but pretty helpful for your research journey!).

Once everything is set up, a project can be uploaded to one or more external repositories, such as Zenodo or OSF. From there, you decide when and how to publish it.

Overall, throughout the process, bridgit accompanies you step by step: from annotation to upload and finally to sharing your data with the scientific community.