nestor Access Workshop in Fulda

Published on Thursday, 06 February 2020

As a member institution of nestor the University of Freiburg participated in behalf of BioDATEN in the nestor-internal two days "Workshop on Access". The workshop intends to help to foster the qualification of partners and clarify questions on digital preservation infrastructures and access systems. Use cases and significant aspects of the user perspectives are discussed following the topics of architecture and conceptional design, aspects of the use of "virtual reading rooms", support and consultation needs on historical digital materials, next generation use like big data and data mining scenarios. Further on the OAIS offers a conceptional framework to receive and store objects differently to presenting them e.g. driven by retention periods. Standardization beside legal aspects are topics to be taken into account as well.

Presentations to kick-start discussions and exchange were given by nestor partners like from the Leibniz Institute for German Language, the German Central Library for Medicine and the State Archive of Northrheine-Westfalia. Invited talks were delivered by Thomas Ledoux from the Bibliothèque Nationale die France: "An experienced practitioner’s view on Access (library perspective)" and Nicola Wissbrock and Sarra Hamdi, The National Archives UK: "An experienced practitioner’s view on Access (archival perspective)". The second day handled topics like "Access Rights Information in the SLUB digital long-term archive" presented by the Saxonian State and University Library Dresden (SLUB), which gave a couple of recommendations on how to pragmatically deal with copyright, usage and access statements for digital objects. The following talks covered "What is new? Changes in OAIS relating to Access" by Fernuniversität Hagen, "Chances and risks of dark archives" by the Technische Informationsbibliothek. The day got conluded by a team member of the CiTAR and BioDATEN long-term access team from the University of Freiburg on "Emulation as a Service". A long-term access module will get included as a module in the BioDATEN science gateway.

DataPLANT NFDI - a further step mastered and work ahead

Published on Wednesday, 05 February 2020

BioDATEN and DAplus+ are jointly involved in the nationwide NFDI process with DataPLANT Consortium (in the area of Fundamental Plant Research). End of January the review of the DFG assessment of the of the application and the oral presentation in Bonn (Link to the older message) in early December arrived. The reviewers gave a widely positive feedback, from which we deduce that DataPLANT is still in the group for consideration of funding. We would like to thank our collaborators from the Galaxy team, especially Anika Erxleben and from the Technical University in Kaiserslautern and Jülich Research Center. The feedback addresses various areas of the proposal, such as "Maturity and relevance", "Research data management" and "Internal structure and sustainability". Besides very positive remarks there are also some critical passages that should be considered in the answer.

Some snippets from the review: "The consortium is thematically closely focused on fundamental plant science research. This strong focus and the fact that, in addition to model plants, some cultivated plant species are also taken into account is seen as a clear strength of this consortium" ... "The planned implementation of processes for metadata validation seems to make sense and the claim to improve the quality of existing metadata instead of discarding it is commendable. The assessment of the quality of raw data is a interesting additional approach, which, in view of the interpretation of the results by the users carefully must be developed. The quality of the already implemented and the level of measures planned beyond this is very high. One of the planned measures is the establishment of 'data stewards' as flexible on-site assistants to be deployed, who are very demanding but also ... is very positive." ... "The consortium's efficient internal structure is impressive, consisting of the various stakeholder groups and the clearly defined bodies, including the 'Data stewards' and 'Data champions'. The topic 'efficiency and sustainability' is well received in the application addressed."

The "Diversity" of the consortium lead, which was quite one-sided in the current application, needs to be improved in the further process. The consortium is now requested to respond to individual points in a three-page statement in reply to the reviewers remarks. In particular, the focus of the answer will lie on points such as "How are the data stewards recruited, trained and meaningfully distributed institutionally and made available to the participants" or "Possibilities of generalising the workflow approach". The improvement of "diversity" should in particular expressed in a broader governance structure to be formulated jointly with the consortium. This will also incorporate initial experiences from the BioDATEN science data center.

The RDM WG in Baden-Württemberg advocates for ORCID

Published on Monday, 13 January 2020

Initiated by the activities of the BioDATEN Science Data Center the Research Data Management Working Group (RDM WG) in Baden-Württemberg fosters the spread and use of ORCID IDs as persistent person identifiers. This ID will provide one of the necessary base metadata items to describe data sets within the BioDATEN community. The support document created and agreed upon is meant to help decision makers in the state's research institutions to choose a suitable solution for stable identification of persons and standardization.

In a strongly networked scientific landscape with a high proportion of national and international cooperation, which is characteristic of the bioinformatics and other scientific communities in Baden-Württemberg, the aim is to promote or at least closely coordinate the services for research data management. This will allow a closer exchange on the challenges and a joint approach to the provision of infrastructures. Persistent identifiers for people in science and the linking of their activities and achievements are very important topics. Due to high fluctuation in science, an agreement on a uniform system such as ORCID would be a considerable alleviation, since switching between institutions does not require any changes to the database. An identifier should be stable and unique for persons and institutions. With this document, the RDM WG would like to join the MoU of DINI and make a recommendation for ORCID, as this system has a high acceptance on the part of institutions and individual researchers.

For use in research information systems and research data management, the ORCID ID of the person becomes the identifier for the PID graph, RORID the identifier for organisations and re3data for repositories. ORCID is based on open source components, is not linked to individual commercial providers, and implements a right of co-determination within the framework of membership. Due to the already high ubiquity ORCID ID is already an accepted worldwide quasi-standard. Furthermore, such a standard helps to support cultural change by also considering research data as credits for scientific reputation. The ORCID is researcher-centric, relies on the CC0 license for metadata and can already be used as an authentication source. There is an established governance structure in which institutions can exert influence through their membership. Furthermore, the implementation ensures that researchers retain full control over their own personal data.

Nevertheless, in an international system like ORCID with decentralised management by researchers, there are some challenges in ensuring the quality of metadata. For example, an assignment to the current institution is not checked. There is some form of public or peer-to-peer control, but no specific enforcement of corrections. Another challenge is the management of departments, entities and organisations. This is getting addressed by RORID. As a global identity management system, the ORCID ID raises data protection issues. However, the organisation has made considerable efforts to increase the level of data protection and in particular to comply with the GDPR.