Software publishing made easier: An integration between 4TU.ResearchData and GitLab

We are pleased to announce that in the sum­mer we are expect­ing to have a full inte­gra­tion between Git­Lab and 4TU.ResearchData to make soft­ware pub­lish­ing eas­i­er for our researchers.

Why support research software?

While 4TU.ResearchData has been tra­di­tion­al­ly focused on help­ing researchers make their research data Find­able, Acces­si­ble, Inter­op­er­a­ble and Re-usable (FAIR), the great major­i­ty of researchers, espe­cial­ly at tech­ni­cal uni­ver­si­ties, heav­i­ly rely on soft­ware for their data pro­cess­ing. Often shar­ing research data with­out the sup­port­ing soft­ware sim­ply doesn’t make sense as these two are so close­ly con­nect­ed. Some­times it can be even more impor­tant to share research soft­ware for the pur­pose of research ver­i­fi­a­bil­i­ty than the data them­selves. 

Since one of the key goals of 4TU.ResearchData is to con­tribute to research repro­ducibil­i­ty, we feel it is our respon­si­bil­i­ty to sup­port researchers not only in pub­lish­ing their research data, but also the research soft­ware.

Why is it important to integrate with GitLab?

Soft­ware man­age­ment prac­tices are con­tin­u­ous­ly improv­ing and increas­ing num­bers of researchers use ded­i­cat­ed tools to col­lab­o­rate on soft­ware projects. GitHub and Git­Lab are two pop­u­lar exam­ples of such tools. Git­Lab is an open source tool which is increas­ing­ly used in insti­tu­tion­al set­tings, and is par­tic­u­lar­ly rec­om­mend­ed for projects work­ing with con­fi­den­tial con­tent (e.g. com­mer­cial­ly-sen­si­tive or pri­va­cy-sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion).

GitHub is already ful­ly inte­grat­ed with 4TU.ResearchData. This means that when a researcher wish­es to pub­lish their code/software in 4TU.ResearchData, the only thing they need to do is con­nect their GitHub repos­i­to­ry with 4TU.ResearchData and then the pub­li­ca­tion process is very smooth and easy: no need to down­load the GitHub repos­i­to­ry, zip it and upload it again at 4TU.ResearchData.

Not sur­pris­ing­ly, since all part­ner insti­tu­tions sup­port local Git­Lab instal­la­tions, researchers who use 4TU.ResearchData to pub­lish their data and code start­ed to ask for Git­Lab inte­gra­tion as well. 

How and when is this going to happen?

This work will be pri­mar­i­ly con­duct­ed by devel­op­ers from figshare (com­pa­ny pro­vid­ing repos­i­to­ry soft­ware plat­form for 4TU.ResearchData). Col­leagues from part­ner insti­tu­tions who over­see local Git­Lab instal­la­tions will help con­nect the insti­tu­tion­al Git­Lab instal­la­tions to 4TU.ResearchData.

The work is start­ing now and we expect it to be com­plete in the sum­mer 2021.

What is the anticipated end result?

The antic­i­pat­ed end result is that the inte­gra­tion with Git­Lab would work sim­i­lar­ly from the user point of view as the cur­rent inte­gra­tion with GitHub. In short: researchers wish­ing to pub­lish their soft­ware in 4TU.ResearchData will be able to eas­i­ly do it by con­nect­ing their Git­Lab repos­i­to­ry with 4TU.ResearchData.

What if I have questions about this work?

If you have any ques­tions about this work, con­tact Ardi Non­hebel, the tech­ni­cal lead at 4TU.ResearchData.

Who funded this work?

This work has been fund­ed in full by the FAIR Soft­ware Pro­gramme Line of the TU Delft Open Sci­ence Pro­gramme.

Writ­ten by: Ardi Non­hebel & Mar­ta Teperek
Edit­ed by: Con­nie Clare