4TU.ResearchData achievements during 2022

Authors: Mari­bel Bar­rera, Zita Bern­hoeft, Arie Braat, Ash­ley Cryan, Egbert Grams­ber­gen, Kees den Hei­jer, Cecile van Heukelom, Jan van der Heul, Roel Janssen, Paula Mar­tinez Lavanchy, Nida van Leer­sum, Iulia Popes­cu, Jacqueli­jn Ringers­ma, Eric Rumon­dor, Cur­tis Shar­ma, Madeleine de Smaele, Maaike Smit, Alessan­dra Soro, Mar­ta Teperek, Car­los Utril­la Guer­rero, Yan Wang, Alek­san­dra Wilczyn­s­ka

When involved in lots of projects and activ­i­ties, it becomes some­times a bit dif­fi­cult to focus on the broad­er pic­ture and to see progress. That’s why it is use­ful to use the year change tran­si­tion to look back at the past year and reflect on what has been accom­plished. Then one can real­ly see and appre­ci­ate the amount of progress made.

Here is what we did in a nut­shell @4TU.ResearchData! We chose to focus only on new projects and endeav­ours (thus in addi­tion to busi­ness as-usu­al activ­i­ties and run­ning exist­ing ser­vices). It seems that we have accom­plished quite a lot!

Repository Software

• Devel­op­ment of Dje­huty, an open source repos­i­to­ry soft­ware 
• A code qual­i­ty assess­ment has been per­formed by TIOBE with the result that the soft­ware code qual­i­ty of the 4TU.ResearchData sys­tem is good (score B).
• Con­vinc­ing the board of 4TU.ResearchData that invest­ment in open source soft­ware is the future
• Secur­ing three sep­a­rate grants from SURF to sup­port tech­ni­cal devel­op­ments: shared upload por­tal, shared search por­tal and bring­ing com­pu­ta­tion to the repos­i­to­ry
• Look­out for 2023:
  • Imple­men­ta­tion of Dje­huty as a replace­ment for figshare (and dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of the con­tract with figshare)
  • Appoint­ment of a Data Solu­tions Engi­neer to work with the com­mu­ni­ty to stim­u­late their con­tri­bu­tions
  • Clos­er col­lab­o­ra­tion with DANS and SURF (on the shared upload and search por­tals) and with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Twente (bring­ing com­pu­ta­tion to the repos­i­to­ry)

Peo­ple respon­si­ble for this work:

• Tech­ni­cal team: Roel Janssen (vision and largest con­tri­bu­tion to Djehuty’s code), Madeleine de Smaele (con­nec­tion of pol­i­cy, tech­ni­cal devel­op­ment and oper­a­tions of the repos­i­to­ry), Egbert Grams­ber­gen (devel­op­ment of the data mod­el, con­tri­bu­tion to Djehuty’s code), Kees den Hei­jer (coor­di­na­tion work, con­tri­bu­tion to Djehuty’s code)
• Com­mu­ni­ty con­tri­bu­tion to the devel­op­ment of Dje­huty: Arie Braat, Fred­erique Bel­liard, Serkan Gir­gin… and more!

Community development

• Organ­i­sa­tion of the first FAIR for Sci­ence and Engi­neer­ing - com­mu­ni­ty meet­up — event on the 7th of Decem­ber 2022
• Involv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty in the devel­op­ment of the 4TU.ResearchData tech­ni­cal infra­struc­ture
• Launch­ing the FAIR Data Fund Autumn call 2022, with 5 win­ners who will final­ize the FAIR­i­fi­ca­tion of their data and present them to the com­mu­ni­ty 
• Re-design the work­ing groups: dur­ing the com­mu­ni­ty event, the com­mu­ni­ty select­ed new top­ics for the Work­ing Groups, the groups also wel­comed new com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers
• Look­out for 2023:
  • Organ­is­ing 4TU.ResearchData road­shows at part­ner insti­tu­tions
  • Train­ing acad­e­my — in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the The­mat­ic Dig­i­tal Com­pe­tence Cen­tre for Nat­ur­al and Engi­neer­ing Sci­ences (TDCC NES)
  • Improv­ing the FAIR Data Fund

Peo­ple respon­si­ble for this work:

• Com­mu­ni­ty man­agers: Alessan­dra Soro (4TU.ResearchData Com­mu­ni­ty Man­ag­er) and Con­nie Clare (ex-4TU.ResearchData Com­mu­ni­ty Man­ag­er)
• Event organ­i­sa­tion: Maaike Smit
• Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and pro­mo­tion: Iulia Popes­cu
• Over and above con­tri­bu­tion to the com­mu­ni­ty activ­i­ties: Zafer Ozturk, Yan Wang, Nico­las Dintzn­er, San­tosh Ilam­paruthi, Shau­na Ni Fhlait­hear­ta, Joost Albers, Mitchell van Zui­jlen, Gior­dano Lipari, Serkan Gir­gin, Fred­erique Bel­liard, Tanya Yankele­vich

Communication

• Refresh­ing our newslet­ters and social media chan­nels
• Pro­mot­ing beau­ti­ful sto­ries and achieve­ments of 4TU.ResearchData and its part­ners
• Par­tic­i­pat­ing in the organ­i­sa­tion of the FAIR DATA Day 2022
• Look­out for 2023:
  • Restruc­tur­ing the web­site
  • Announce­ment of the new repos­i­to­ry solu­tion and new guid­ance on the web­site
  • Strate­gic com­mu­ni­ca­tion around the 4TU.ResearchData Strat­e­gy for 2024–2027

Peo­ple respon­si­ble for this work:

• 4TU.ResearchData Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Advi­sor: Iulia Popes­cu, and Deirdre Casel­la (ex-4TU.ResearchData Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Advi­sor); web edi­tors: Cecile van Heukelom  and Anna Est­land (ex-Web Edi­tor)
• Con­tin­u­ous sup­port and col­lab­o­ra­tion with the TU Delft Library Com­mu­ni­ca­tions team: Lynette Crox­ford and Emi­lie Yane-Lopez. 

Research Data Netherlands (RDNL)

• Co-organ­i­sa­tion of the FAIR Data Day and 4TU.ResearchData’s dataset win­ning the Dutch Data Prize
• Inves­ti­gat­ing an alter­na­tive plat­form to host RDNL cours­es
• Look­out for 2023:
  • Launch­ing the GDPR4DataSupport course
  • Migra­tion of cours­es to a new plat­form
  • Refresh­ing the RDNL web­site

Peo­ple respon­si­ble for this work:

• Col­leagues from 4TU.ResearchData who led these efforts: Zita Bern­hoeft (over­see­ing all the activ­i­ties and the sec­re­tary to the RDNL Steer­ing Com­mit­tee), Car­los Utril­la Guer­rero (coach and chair of the train­ing work­ing group), Eiri­ni Zorm­pa (ex-coach and chair of the train­ing work­ing group), Iulia Popes­cu (4TU.ResearchData Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Advi­sor and chair of the com­mu­ni­ca­tions work­ing group), Deirdre Casel­la (ex-4TU.ResearchData Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Advi­sor and chair of the com­mu­ni­ca­tions work­ing group), Mari­bel Bar­rera (Edu­ca­tion expert, who inves­ti­gat­ed plat­forms to run cours­es and migrat­ed con­tent), 
• Jan van der Heul and Eric Rumon­dor who curat­ed all our datasets (with­out them we wouldn’t have won the prize)
• Jan van der Heul, Alessan­dra Soro, Madeleine de Smaele who helped with the nom­i­na­tions for the Dutch Data Prize
• Iulia Popes­cu, Zita Bern­hoeft, Mari­bel Bar­rera, Maaike Smit and Jan van der Heul who helped with the organ­i­sa­tion of the FAIR Data Day
• Kees den Hei­jer who has over­seen the tech­ni­cal aspects of RDNL web­sites and emails 
• Col­leagues from RDNL part­ner insti­tu­tions:
  • Mar­jan Grootveld, Saman­tha Willem­sen, Ingrid Korv­er, Cees Hof, Emi­lie Kraaikamp, Kim Fer­gu­son, Maaike Ver­burg (DANS)
  • Celia van Gelder, Ruben Kok, Kim­ber­ley Zwiers, Mascha Janssen, Miri­am Beusink, Fieke Schoots (DTL)
  • Mark Cole, Mau­rice Bouwhuis, Maith­ili Kalamkar, Ander Astudil­lo, Jorik van Keme­nade, Sanne Koe­nen (SURF)

Skills4EOSC

• We got the grant and we kicked off the Skills4EOSC project 
• We appoint­ed two won­der­ful col­leagues who are lead­ing the work: Cur­tis Shar­ma and Nida van Leer­sum
• Look­out for 2023:
  • Doing the excit­ing work as beau­ti­ful­ly described in a post by Iulia
  • The appoint­ment of Saba Shar­ma, as anoth­er Skills4EOSC Train­ing Coor­di­na­tor (who will togeth­er with Nida)

Peo­ple respon­si­ble for this work:

• Cur­tis Shar­ma, the Skills4EOSC Com­mu­ni­ty Man­ag­er and leader of the WP6, Nida van Leer­sum, the Skills4EOSC Train­ing Coor­di­na­tor, Paula Mar­tinez Lavanchy, who help coor­di­nate train­ing con­tri­bu­tion of TU Delft/4TU.ResearchData before Nida start­ed
• Daniel van Nor­denne, who helps admin­is­ter the finan­cial aspects of the project
• Rianne van den Bogerd, who advised on the legal aspects of the agree­ments
• Col­leagues who helped write the grant: Paula Mar­tinez Lavanchy, Con­nie Clare, Emmy Tsang and Alas­tair Dun­ning
• Iulia Popes­cu, who pre­pared press releas­es about the project and led social media com­mu­ni­ca­tion

Thematic Digital Competence Centre for Natural and Engineering Sciences (TDCC NES)

• 4TU.ResearchData became the host of the TDCC NES (as nice­ly explained in a press release writ­ten by Iulia Popes­cu)
• The grant for the appoint­ment of per­son­nel for the TDCC NES has been award­ed! 
• Jacqueli­jn Ringers­ma has been appoint­ed as the Inter­im Net­work Man­ag­er and brought the com­mu­ni­ty togeth­er, ini­ti­at­ed sev­er­al bot­tle­neck projects and start­ed gov­er­nance dis­cus­sions
• Zita Bern­hoeft has been appoint­ed to pro­vide project sup­port for the TDCC NES start­ing Jan­u­ary 2023
• Look­out for 2023:
  • Form­ing the TDCC NES con­sor­tium
  • Fund­ing and start­ing the bot­tle­neck projects and devel­op­ing a new pro­gramme for future fund­ing
  • The appoint­ment of Mira Stan­ic as Com­mu­ni­ty Coor­di­na­tor and the appoint­ment of the Net­work Man­ag­er

Peo­ple respon­si­ble for this work:

• Jacqueli­jn Ringers­ma who has spear­head­ed all these activ­i­ties and made every­one tru­ly enthu­si­as­tic about the TDCC NES
• Yan and the team of Data Stew­ards as well as Julie with the DCC team were there the first lis­ten­ing ear and feed­back to help to shape the ideas of the TDCC. 
• Alessan­dra pro­vides con­tin­u­ous and inspir­ing ini­tia­tives and feed­back to the com­mu­ni­ty build­ing and train­ing ini­tia­tives that the TDCC NES takes. 
• Mar­ta is a great inspi­ra­tion, has lots of infor­ma­tion and con­tact, and real­ly helps Jacqueli­jn out when need­ed.