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Against the backdrop of increasing digitization in research, the importance of structured research data management (RDM) cannot be overstated. A recent assessment of the status quo of RDM in North Rhine-Westphalia shows that there are still major gaps when it comes to professional RDM in line with the recommendations of the German Research Foundation (DFG) (DV-ISA, 2016).
The aim of the “sciebo Research Data Services” project is to develop a low-threshold offering for the management of research data that is clearly designed as a service for scientists. The focus is not on developing entirely new services, but rather on building a management suite for flexible integration and coupling with existing services and systems, as well as the exemplary implementation of end-to-end scientific workflows based on real use cases. The established collaboration service “sciebo – die Campuscloud” already provides a productive platform that allows services to be shared across locations. Based on sciebo, tools, workflows, and services are to be developed that support researchers in implementing structured research data management.
The core idea is to create bridge functionalities that meet researchers where they already store most of their data during the research process and, building on this, provide them with easy-to-use tools, e.g., for preparing data, publishing it, and seamlessly transferring it to repositories or long-term archives. Among other things, connections to the CLARIN web services for the digital humanities and connectors for the Zenodo and EUDAT projects and for the research data repository of the University of Münster are planned. This will enable consistent and automated work processes.
The project thus ties in nicely with other existing projects: As part of the Research Data Management Organiser Project RDMO, a separately operated web application is being developed that allows the information necessary for sustainable data management to be entered and managed centrally. The developed system makes the DMP available in machine-readable form via API. This is a basic requirement for setting up automated, consistent workflows. It is therefore planned to use the RDMO for the creation of DMPs and for recording project-wide parameters (license information, repository for the delivery of research data, etc.). The sciebo RDS project is the first to consistently use these features, which is why a collaboration was agreed upon. In this respect, we consider the distinctive bridging functionality of sciebo RDS to be an ideal complement to our ongoing activities.
It should be clearly emphasized that the goal is not to develop another repository for research data or additional services in the sense of a virtual research environment. Rather, the widely used scientific tool sciebo is to be used as an entry point for research data management and expanded with functionalities that enable the connection and integration of existing repositories and services. The bridging function between the established working environment of scientists and the information infrastructures required for the exchange, archiving, and publication of research data is absolutely paramount in terms of consistent work processes.