For three years, the twelve Austrian partner universities, led by TU Graz, worked together on the project to further develop research data infrastructures, RDM tools, services and expertise, to exploit synergies and to create the framework conditions for providing RDM support as shared services. 

Connecting experts, building communities

Regular online meetings, the establishment of topic-specific working groups, a shared knowledge platform on coLab, the continuation of the ‘FDM in Österreich’ webinar series, and the organisation of large, open events facilitated exchange within the project team and far beyond. 

It is the wish of all project partners to maintain this lively and fruitful communication and collaboration within the consortium even after the project has ended. It also became clear that the tasks in the field of RDM are similar at all universities and that pooling expertise and resources is desirable in many areas.

Technical tools and services

For the technical tools and services, communities of users and interested parties have become firmly established throughout the project. Both the user base and the benefits of the open-source tools DAMAP (DMP tool) and eLabFTW (electronic lab notebook), as well as the repository solutions Phaidra and InvenioRDM, were expanded as part of the project. Various operational models were employed when introducing these shared tools and services, depending on the technical and human resources available to the respective project partners. By dividing responsibilities into deployment, maintenance, and support, operational models can be applied flexibly. 

The potential of cross-university shared services is clearly demonstrated by the DAMAP Cloud, developed by TU Wien in collaboration with TU Graz. In this cloud service for creating institution-specific data management plans, the technical tasks – such as deployment, maintenance and support – are clearly separated from the content-related administrative tasks. In this way, the partner universities will be able to provide their researchers with a straightforward service that requires minimal maintenance in the future. The organisational prerequisite is a long-term, transparent governance and funding model, which will be finalised by the end of the year. 

Joint development for outstanding quality

The active involvement of the project partners, in particular TU Wien and TU Graz, in the further development of CERN’s InvenioRDM software has contributed to significant improvements in the institutional research data repositories. Key milestones here included authentication via the eduGAIN interfederation and the introduction of a curation workflow, which was a crucial step towards the TU Wien Research Data Repository being awarded the CoreTrustSeal label.

What comes next?

Current national developments point to a large-scale initiative set to address cross-university shared services in the future. In the meantime, further RDM development and exchange among Austrian research institutions are taking place on a reduced scale without a formal framework. This is facilitated through the contacts and networks established during the project, regular meetings of individual communities and interest groups, and, where possible, annual events to strengthen collaboration. 

Further information

Further information and resources relating to the project can be found on the Cluster Forschung +Daten website: Shared RDM - Cluster Forschung+Daten, opens an external URL in a new window

Contact

TU Wien
Center for Research Data Management
research.data@tuwien.ac.at