4TU.ResearchData is a data and soft­ware repos­i­to­ry for sci­ence, engi­neer­ing and design domains, as well as sup­port ser­vices and a vibrant com­mu­ni­ty around them.

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4TU.Federation is the fed­er­a­tion of the four Dutch uni­ver­si­ties of tech­nol­o­gy: Delft Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy (TU Delft), Eind­hoven Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy (TU/e), Uni­ver­si­ty of Twente (UT), Wagenin­gen Uni­ver­si­ty and Research Cen­tre (WUR). Found­ed in 2007 as 3TU, the Fed­er­a­tion name changed to 4TU in 2016 when WUR joined forces.

Vis­it the 4TU.Federation web­site for more infor­ma­tion.

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4TU.ResearchData helps researchers pub­lish their research data and soft­ware and make it avail­able in the long-term. In addi­tion, 4TU.ResearchData offers researchers com­mu­ni­ty sup­port, train­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties, the­mat­ic events, funds to help them make their data FAIR, as well as con­sul­tan­cy sup­port.

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Any­one from sci­ence, engi­neer­ing and design can use 4TU.ResearchData to upload and pub­lish their research data and soft­ware.

Learn more on our Get­ting Start­ed web­page.

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A trust­wor­thy repos­i­to­ry is con­firmed as com­ply­ing with require­ments relat­ed to organ­i­sa­tion­al gov­er­nance, data man­age­ment and tech­ni­cal infra­struc­ture. Togeth­er, these require­ments pro­vide assur­ance that the data pro­vid­ed are from a trust­wor­thy repos­i­to­ry.

For 4TU.ResearchData, the CoreTrust­Seal accred­i­ta­tion pro­vides researchers with the assur­ance that their data held in our repos­i­to­ry will remain use­ful and mean­ing­ful into the future. The accred­i­ta­tion fur­ther assures fun­ders, pub­lish­ers and oth­er stake­hold­ers that resources are find­able, acces­si­ble, under­stand­able and reusable over time, thus enabling repro­ducibil­i­ty of research and data reuse for future dis­cov­er­ies.

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The FAIR prin­ci­ples are inter­na­tion­al guide­lines for research data man­age­ment that aim to opti­mise the reuse of research data, to pro­mote best prac­tices on research data man­age­ment and to enable Open Sci­ence. This is achieved by mak­ing research data Find­able, Acces­si­ble, Inter­op­er­a­ble and Reusable.

Data man­age­ment plans and trust­ed data repos­i­to­ries, such as 4TU.ResearchData, help to make data FAIR.

Learn more on our Man­age & Share page; the FAIR Prin­ci­ples tab

FAIR data prac­tices, such as good doc­u­men­ta­tion, data shar­ing, and striv­ing to increase repro­ducibil­i­ty, have many ben­e­fits, such as:

• A cita­tion boost (Colav­iz­za et al., 2020)
• Avoid­ing dis­as­ter through robust work­flows (Markowetz, 2015)
• Increased effi­cien­cy through reuse of oth­er people’s work

Resources to sup­port researchers to make their research data FAIR are avail­able on the Pub­lish-Cite page of our our web­site.

More infor­ma­tion on how 4TU.ResearchData adheres to the FAIR Prin­ci­ples is avail­able on our Man­age & Share page; the FAIR Prin­ci­ples tab

Every researcher can upload up to 5 GB of data per year to 4TU.ResearchData free of charge. For uploads larg­er than 5 GB we charge a one-off €4.50 per GB. For researchers from part­ner and mem­ber insti­tu­tions (TU Delft, Eind­hoven Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy, Uni­ver­si­ty of Twente and Wagenin­gen Uni­ver­si­ty & Research) we apply spe­cial rates and upload vol­umes which you can find on our Costs page. Learn more on our Pub­lish & Cite, User’s web­page.

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Please vis­it our Poli­cies and Guide­lines web­page to access infor­ma­tion on our:

• Data Col­lec­tion Pol­i­cy
• Deposit Agree­ment
• Data Pro­cess­ing Agree­ment
• Pri­va­cy pol­i­cy
• Terms of Use
• Preser­va­tion pol­i­cy
• Deposit guide­lines
• Guide­lines for cre­at­ing a README file
• Pre­ferred file for­mats
• Meta­da­ta review guide­lines
• Restrict­ed Access

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4TU.ResearchData strong­ly encour­ages the use of stan­dard, exchange­able or open file for­mats. For the pre­ferred for­mats, 4TU.ResearchData guar­an­tees that the research data will remain acces­si­ble in the future.

Learn more in our Pre­ferred File For­mats guide­line.

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Any researcher, from any­where, can upload their research data to 4TU.ResearchData.

Learn more on our Pub­lish & Cite, User’s web­page.

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We rec­om­mend data to be “open” when­ev­er pos­si­ble*. How­ev­er, you can also embar­go the data (delay access for a spec­i­fied time) or restrict who gets access to data. For more details, please refer to our Access Con­di­tions tab on this web­page.

*Data should be restrict­ed if they are of sen­si­tive nature (e.g. still con­tain per­son­al infor­ma­tion because the data could not be ful­ly anonymised). For guid­ance, con­sult the GDPR pol­i­cy and guide­lines of your home insti­tute on how to han­dle sen­si­tive and per­son­al data.

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4TU.ResearchData strong­ly encour­ages the use of stan­dard, exchange­able or open file for­mats. For the pre­ferred for­mats, 4TU.ResearchData guar­an­tees that the research data will remain acces­si­ble in the future.
Learn more in our Pre­ferred File For­mats guide­line.

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If you are pub­lish­ing a paper and need to sep­a­rate­ly deposit the under­ly­ing datasets, you can reserve a DOI in advance to pro­vide to the pub­lish­er.

Vis­it our Man­age and Share page to view the Step-by-Step guide under “Reserve a DOI”:

1. Go to your Dash­board page and click the Add new dataset but­ton.
2. Add descrip­tive meta­da­ta
   The reserved DOI for the dataset can be found in the DOI reser­va­tion field.
3. Click Save draft once you have com­plet­ed the form

Please note that the reserved DOI is inac­tive, and will only resolve once your dataset is pub­lished.

Find all infor­ma­tion on our Man­age & Share page (at ‘Reserve a DOI’ tab)

4TU.ResearchData assigns DOIs at two lev­els: to a dataset (with mul­ti­ple data files), and to a col­lec­tion (aggre­ga­tion of mul­ti­ple datasets).
At what lev­el and how gran­u­lar you want to pub­lish your research data, con­sid­er the expec­ta­tions and needs of your research com­mu­ni­ty. How will the data be used, and what is like­ly to be cit­ed?

DOIs are pri­mar­i­ly designed for cita­tion and dis­cov­ery. Each citable enti­ty should make sense inde­pen­dent of any wider set or col­lec­tion to which it might belong.

Vis­it our Man­age & Share page for infor­ma­tion on how to reserve a DOI (at ‘Reserve a DOI’ tab).

Inte­grat­ing your 4TU.ResearchData and git account(s) allows you to make pub­lic the code asso­ci­at­ed with a research out­put, and make clear which ver­sion of the code you used.

The 4TU.ResearchData plat­form has sup­port for the Git pro­to­col. To pub­lish the source code of your soft­ware, fol­low the instruc­tions in the meta­da­ta form when choos­ing Soft­ware deposit under the head­ing Files.

Find more infor­ma­tion on ‘Con­nect­ing with Git’ on our Get­ting start­ed page.

Yes, you can share your draft dataset with a pri­vate link.
To do this, go to your My datasets page and click the pri­vate link icon (chain) to the far right of the dataset title. Or find the pri­vate link fea­ture on top of the dataset’s Edit dataset page.
You will be direct­ed to the Pri­vate link page. Click the but­ton Cre­ate new pri­vate link which opens a form:

• Select the dura­tion of the pri­vate link, and option­al­ly the pur­pose of the link and who the link will be shared with.
• Check the box Hide authors and affil­i­a­tion if the link is shared for blind (anony­mous) peer review.

When the form is com­plet­ed, click the Acti­vate pri­vate link but­ton.
You will be able to send the result­ing pri­vate link to, for exam­ple, the peer review­ers.

Vis­it our Man­age & Share page for more infor­ma­tion.

The step-by-step instruc­tions for upload­ing your data are described on our Upload your Data web­page.

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The stor­age where 4TU.ResearchData saves and stores all data is man­aged by the ICT depart­ment of Delft Uni­ver­si­ty of Tech­nol­o­gy. All data is stored in object stor­age at two loca­tions in Delft and in one loca­tion in Lei­den.

If cor­rup­tion takes place “in tran­sit” between the appli­ca­tion serv­er and the stor­age, this is imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­nized because the file is checked with a hash. If this does not match, the trans­fer will be done again.

When the file has arrived in our stor­age envi­ron­ment and is in the 3 loca­tions, we have 3 sep­a­rate copies. If for any rea­son 1 copy becomes cor­rupt, this is detect­ed because the sys­tem reg­u­lar­ly checks all hash­es of the files with each oth­er. In this case ICT will receive a mes­sage and the file will be repaired using the oth­er copies.

All dataset own­ers and vis­i­tors can see the md5 check when they have uploaded or view a file from a dataset. For more infor­ma­tion, please con­sult our Data Col­lec­tion Pol­i­cy.

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It is not pos­si­ble to delete files from our stor­age instant­ly. Delet­ed files are stored on the stor­age for 1 year after a delete action, by the pol­i­cy of our stor­age, before they are per­ma­nent­ly delet­ed.

For more infor­ma­tion, please con­sult our Data Col­lec­tion Pol­i­cy.

The 4TU.ResearchData com­mu­ni­ty is built around our inter­na­tion­al data repos­i­to­ry for sci­ence, engi­neer­ing and design. Our mem­bers com­prise researchers and research data sup­port­ers from dif­fer­ent domains of exper­tise. The com­mu­ni­ty pro­vides an oppor­tu­ni­ty for its mem­bers to con­nect and exchange knowl­edge about best prac­tices for the cre­ation and reuse of FAIR data with­in the tech­ni­cal sci­ences.

Join our com­mu­ni­ty by cre­at­ing your pub­lic pro­file and we’ll con­tact you with a ‘wel­come pack’ and an invi­ta­tion to join our Slack work­space.

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Sub­scribe for a month­ly round-up of news, events, oppor­tu­ni­ties and announce­ments from 4TU.ResearchData by pro­vid­ing your email address.

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You can reach us at researchdata@4tu.nl. One of our team mem­bers will respond to your query as soon as pos­si­ble.

Con­tact details for 4TU.ResearchData rep­re­sen­ta­tives at each of our mem­ber uni­ver­si­ties as well as the Data Cura­tion and Com­mu­ni­ty Man­age­ment team mem­bers are avail­able on our web­site.

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We strong­ly encour­age the use of per­sis­tent iden­ti­fiers, includ­ing ORCID for researchers.
You can con­nect your ORCID to your account in 4TU.ResearchData: go to your My Pro­file page and click Con­nect ORCID on top of the page.
Your ORCID will now be shown in every dataset you pub­lish.

Via the Search & Link option in your ORCID page, you can autho­rise Cross­ref and/or Dat­aCite — the main sup­pli­ers of DOIs of research pub­li­ca­tions — to auto­mat­i­cal­ly update your pub­li­ca­tion list.

Yes. You can cre­ate an eduID after which 4TU.ResearchData can move your datasets to your new account.

Find infor­ma­tion about log­ging in here.

The steps of the meta­da­ta qual­i­ty review are described in detail in our Meta­da­ta Review Guide­lines.

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Yes. You are allowed to mod­i­fy your pub­lished dataset. Go to your My Datasets page, locate your record in the list of pub­lished datasets, and click on the “+” icon to the far right. You will be tak­en to the Edit dataset page where you can edit meta­da­ta and/or files. Click Sub­mit for review to pub­lish the dataset.

Be aware that mod­i­fy­ing the dataset’s meta­da­ta or the file(s) asso­ci­at­ed with the dataset will always cre­ate a new ver­sion of the item and its DOI. DOIs are ver­sioned, where­by the alphanu­mer­ic string may be fol­lowed by e.g. .v1, .v2, .v3, and so on to denote ver­sion num­bers.

The base DOI of the pub­lished dataset (with­out ver­sion num­ber) will always take you to the lat­est ver­sion of the item. Ver­sions are list­ed and acces­si­ble in the drop-down menu under the dataset title.

Learn more on our After Upload­ing web­page.

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Yes, you can change any meta­da­ta ele­ment includ­ing the licence. Fol­low the guid­ance in the pre­vi­ous FAQ about updating/changing datasets.

Be aware that the dataset can already be used under the con­di­tions of the licence in the pre­vi­ous ver­sion. That can’t be changed. But fol­low­ing users will always be direct­ed to the most recent ver­sion of the dataset with the cur­rent licence.

More infor­ma­tion on licens­ing can be found onthis page.

There is a work­flow to request access to a restrict­ed dataset. Check the para­graph ‘How to request access to a restrict­ed dataset’ here.

4TU.ResearchData sup­ports all research dis­ci­plines with­in sci­ence, engi­neer­ing and design domains.

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A down­load means down­load­ing (one of the) files. A view means vis­it­ing the land­ing page of the dataset. There are a cou­ple of rea­sons why the down­load count can be high­er:

• Peo­ple can auto­mate down­load­ing the file in a script. That would require 1 view and then only direct­ly access­ing the link. (Repos­i­to­ry-wide scrap­ing also has this effect)
• Our down­load sta­tis­tics count 1 down­load when down­load­ing a sin­gle file. If your dataset con­tains, for exam­ple, 5 files, and some­body down­loads these 5 files indi­vid­u­al­ly, the down­load count would be increased by 5 (instead of 1). So, view­ing the page to find the down­load links (+1 on views) -> down­load­ing 5 files (+5 for down­loads).