Managing Research Data

Research data is valuable and (often) unique. New technologies generate and use large amounts of digital data (‘big data’), especially in the natural sciences. However, the arts and humanities are also in the process of increasingly combining qualitative hermeneutic approaches with digital methods (digital humanities).  

Digital repositories are becoming ever more important for accumulating and evaluating research data, and they are also increasingly a prerequisite for high-quality publications that refer to centrally accessible research data in such repositories. They also play an important role in bringing research results to the public and have great potential for establishing digital forms of teaching as part of e-learning.

However, regardless of whether research data is analogue or digital, the quality of the data also depends significantly on the documentation of the metadata.

Projects involving the development and building of repositories are usually subject to limited funding periods. This has previously resulted in limited amounts of networking and only marginal long-term integration into supra-regional or interdisciplinary usage concepts. For this reason, the DFG and other funding bodies now require a sustainability guarantee at the proposal stage, which until now could be demonstrated by a commitment to data archiving and high server availability. 

In the future, this commitment will no longer suffice as the funding bodies’ requirements have (rightly) become significantly more stringent and increasingly comprehensive data management plans are becoming part of funding proposals.

The need for support and further development of third-party-funded repositories, which take large amounts of effort to create, and information systems for research data is obvious, as these quickly become obsolete and no longer functional due to constant software developments, not only of operating systems, if they are not continuously supported by IT. 

Consequently, the DFG has already created Guidelines for handling research data, compliance with which must be demonstrated when submitting a funding proposal; and supports the networking of data from such repositories. These measures serve to fulfil requirements that were specified e.g. by the DFG in 2013 to ensure good scientific practice and that also feature in the Principles for Handling Research Data of the Alliance of German Science Organisations of 24 June 2010.

In light of this, one of URZ’s tasks is to assist in the development and implementation of data management plans and to provide the technical and specialised infrastructure required for contributing to the sustainability of repositories and research data.

Researchers are provided with appropriate training and support in professional data management, tailored to the specific requirements of their discipline.