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TU Wien contributes to InvenioRDM development

Due to active contribution of the Center for Research Data Management, TU Wien is now an official member of the InvenioRDM developer community.

On the right a photo of Maximilian Moser at his desk, on the left the logos of InvenioRDM and TU Wien, in between the graphic of a handshake.

Closely connected: Maximilian Moser and InvenioRDM l Photo: Tomasz Miksa, edited by Florian Wörister

TU Wien’s new data repository, which is currently being set up as part of the FAIR Data Austria Project, is based on InvenioRDM. InvenioRDM is an open source repository application developed by CERN. During the last months, our developers had the chance to assist the InvenioRDM developers in the implementation of a flexible access control and permission system and a share-by-link feature.

Implementation of a share-by-link feature

The share-by-link-feature in InvenioRDM is similar to that in Google Docs and enables users to generate secret links with specifiable sets of permissions for restricted-access records. When the record in question is accessed via such a secret link, the specified set of permissions like for example viewing of metadata or access to files is granted to the users, regardless of whether or not they are authenticated. This opens up the possibility of sharing access to otherwise restricted records with external users, for example for peer reviews.

Improvement of the authentication modules

In May, our developers also participated in a development sprint that focussed on improving the existing authentication modules. Among the contributions were some features that they had previously added to our own data repository. Further additions included documentation and the possibility to customize the registration form. In particular, it is now possible to require new users to accept the system's terms and conditions before being able to finalize the sign-up.

A win-win situation

Of course, this close collaboration benefits all parties involved in the project. All of our contributions are freely accessible to the entire community, while we can focus on speeding up the development of features that we consider the most relevant. Additionally, our developers gained a lot of insight into the inner workings of the project during these development sprints, which as such was a very interesting experience.

Overall, we are very happy the way things turned out and intend to continue the close collaboration with the core developers where possible and sensible!

Further information

InvenioRDM v1.0 Release Notes, opens an external URL in a new window  

InvenioRDM v2.0 Release Notes, opens an external URL in a new window  

 

Contact

TU Wien
Center for Research Data Management
Favoritenstraße 16, 1040 Vienna
research.data@tuwien.ac.at

Twitter: @RDMTUWien