New KE-report: ‘The Evolving Landscape of Federated Research Data Infrastructures’

Knowledge Exchange, a consortium of six national organisations in Europe tasked with developing infrastructures and services to enable the use of digital technologies to improve higher education and research, has just a released a report on federated research data infrastructures.

In 2016, the Knowledge Exchange Research Data expert group identified a need for better understanding of the nature and consequences of research and data infrastructure being more and more federated. Work was designed to find answers to questions such as ‘Which are the main drivers for federating RD infrastructures and services ? What are the expected benefits? What are the consequences for research and researchers? What challenges and issues arise when making a federated research data infrastructure function well?’ Read the rest of this entry »

CESSDA becomes an ERIC

CESSDA, the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives, has been established as an ERIC (European Research Infrastructure Consortium) by the European Commission a few days ago. It is the first time in the history of the European Union that a non-member state (Norway) hosts an ERIC.

An ERIC is a specific legal form to facilitate the establishment and operation of research infrastructures with European interest. The principal task of ERIC is to establish and operate new or existing research infrastructures on a non-economic basis. The ERIC becomes a legal entity from the date the Commission decision setting up the ERIC takes effect. Read the rest of this entry »

New countrywide RD-INF Project approved: Generic Research Data Infrastructure (GeRDI) ready to get off the starting blocks

In my previous post, I presented some analyses and recommendations the RfII (German Council for Scientific Information Infrastructures) made for the future development and structuring of the German national landscape on research data management. For instance, the RfII found, that

‘there is an overall absence of coordination, and current efforts often take the form of parallel, project-based initiatives. Universal access to services for data management is lacking, as the key actors at present are individual institutions and organisations, and their efforts often suffer from limited financing and/or excessive niche focus. In addition, the high staff turnover means that valuable know-how is frequently lost. Furthermore, the range of services being provided is impaired by the absence of governance mechanisms which could impart greater strategic direction.’

Currently, when scientists generate research data often the question arises where to store the data. Currently, only a handful of universities already have an appropriate infrastructure in place while for the big majority such a research data infrastructure is still missing.

Also from the perspective of a researcher who is looking for (reusing) data already available, the current state is unsatisfactory: The few research data infrastructures currently available at German universities, but also other research data centres from different subjects, are hardly linked with other data repositories and often remain data silos. Read the rest of this entry »

Austria: New report “Researchers and their Data” published

A solid research data management system is the foundation of cooperative, open research. In addition such a system fosters reproducibility and verifiability of research.

This topic is relevant and up-to-date for researchers, funding bodies and senior posts of scientific institutions, which is currently also underpinned by the pilot for research data of the European Commission.

In this context, the project e-Infrastructures Austria has just released a report that provides an overview of an Austria-wide survey on research data. The survey was carried out at the beginning of 2015. It was directed at the scientific and artistic-scientific personnel of all 21 public universities and three extramural research institutions in Austria.

The project received 3026 completed questionnaires, which is equivalent to an average response rate of 9 %. Read the rest of this entry »

German’s Rector Conference recommends RDM as strategic task for university directorates

In a suggestion published a few days ago, the general meeting of the German’s Rector Conference (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz (HRK), a voluntary association of currently 268 state and state-recognised universities and other higher education institutions (HEI) in Germany at which more than 94 per cent of all students in Germany are registered), has advised university directorates to take the necessary steps to support research data management, crosslinking and long-term preservation of and access to research data. For these important tasks suitable infrastructure components are required – a task the German’s Rector Conference also suggests the university directorates to be responsible for.

Read the rest of this entry »

English translation of the Project synthesis “Framework for an inter-disciplinary research data infrastructure” published

The German project RADIESCHEN / radish (Rahmenbedingungen einer disziplinübergreifenden Forschungsdateninfrastruktur /Framework for an inter-disciplinary research data infrastructure) has published the project’s synthesis in English. The objective of this DFG-funded project was the development of a roadmap and recommendations for a multi-disciplinary research data infrastructure in Germany.

The project team identified requirements for generic components of existing infrastructures and potential for cross-linking of multi-disciplinary components. The resulting analysis is based on a survey of existing and new projects and includes measures for community building. Key aspects of the analysis are the technical components of the infrastructure, the cost model and the investigation of cross-disciplinary topics.

Photo: “Lachdieschen” by dwarslöper / flickr.com. License: CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 DE