Research Data Management
Research data management (RDM) is an essential prerequisite for the digital preservation, reusability and archiving of scientific data. In line with the recommendations of the German Rectors' Conference, the Research Data Alliance and the E-Science Strategy of the state of Baden-Württemberg, the University of Tübingen supports responsible and sustainable handling of research data.
In this context, research data management at the University of Tübingen encompasses the entire research data lifecycle: from project planning to generating and storing data; metadata description and documentation to data archiving and post-archiving use. This also includes the conscious decision as to which data from the research process should be preserved in the long term.
Benefits of Good Data Management
Fulfilling the requirements of third-party funders
By creating a data management plan and developing and implementing it over the course of a research project, the requirements of third-party funders with regard to research data management are met.
Legal compliance
Good research data management provides legal compliance in regard to data protection, copyright, licensing and patent law by defining these aspects.
Protection against data loss
Storing research data in repositories and long-term archives provides a secure way of preserving data and thus protects against unintentional data loss or misuse.
Possibilities of data processing
Research data management makes it possible to structure data even better, make it easier to understand, and prepare it with the help of metadata and digital tools. As a result, the data can be found and reused more easily.
Increased visibility in the academic world
Permanent citability and referenceability through so-called persistent identifiers increase one's visibility in the academic world.
Compliance with good scientific practice
Good research data management provides the researcher with evidence of independent scientific work as well as a methodologically correct procedure in accordance with the guidelines for ensuring good scientific practice of the University of Tübingen as well as the DFG.
Subsequent use of data for follow-up projects
By the use of services such as repositories, tools, persistent identifiers, and interoperable interfaces, research data management offers the possibility of easy reuse and sharing of selected data for possible follow-up projects, alone or with others, demonstrating a responsible and sustainable use of one's research data.
The University of Tübingen offers a variety of services in the area of research data management - both across disciplines and for specific disciplines - within the framework of central institutions as well as externally funded projects:
Central Institutions
Information, Communication and Media Center (IKM)
The Information, Communication and Media Center (IKM) consists of the two units
University Library as Central Library of the University (UB)
Center for Data Processing (ZDV)
Objectives and tasks of the IKM are in particular:
- support and development of digital information processing and communication technology of the University (cooperative supply system)
- supervision and development of the University's media technology equipment
- Planning of a balanced use of all resources of the facilities assigned to the IKM
- Coordinating and leading the development of a university development plan for information, communications and multimedia
- Planning the development of the IKM in terms of buildings and personnel
The IKM is a central operating unit whose management reports directly to the Rectorate.
Core Facilities
Core Facilities are central service facilities of the University that provide equipment and services across disciplines, including research data management.
Digital Humanities Center (Research Data Management and Spatial Humanities)
Humanities and Social Sciences
fdat@dh-center.uni-tuebingen.de
LISA+ (Center for Light-Matter Interaction, Sensors and Analytics)
Natural Sciences
info@lisaplus.uni-tuebingen.de
Methods Center (Center for Empirical Methods)
Economic and Social Sciences
sekretariat@mz.uni-tuebingen.de
QBIC (Quantitative Biology Center)
Natural and Life Sciences
support@qbic.zendesk.com
TSM (Tübingen Structural Microscopy)
Natural Sciences
st.fischer@uni-tuebingen.de
Dr. Eberle Center for Digital Competences
The Dr. Eberle Center for Digital Competences offers students and young researchers from all disciplines at the University of Tübingen a wide range of courses to familiarize themselves with innovative methods and tools for the acquisition, processing, analysis, visualization as well as sustainable storage of digital data. It thus supports members of the University in acquiring basic methodological knowledge and practical skills for professional research data management.
Multidisciplinary Services for All Disciplines
FDAT Research Data Archive
The Research Data Archive FDAT offers services and technical infrastructure for long-term archiving and re-use of research data.
- Target group: open to all disciplines with a particular focus on the humanities and social sciences
- Consultation before the project starts, e.g. to prepare a data management plan and data processing
forschungsdaten@ikm.uni-tuebingen.de, +49 7071 29-77848
NFDI - German National Research Data Infrastructure
In late 2018, the Joint Science Conference decided to establish and fund a German National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI). The German Federal and State Governments will provide up to EUR 90 million annually for this purpose until 2028 by funding consortia from various disciplines in three funding rounds. Scientists from the University of Tübingen are currently involved in five NFDI consortia, three more consortia with Tübingen scientists will start in March 2023.
Goals of the NFDI consortia are:
- systematically and sustainably improve access to research data
- open up decentralized, project-based, temporarily stored data repositories
- create an overall structure of interlinked consortia
- bring together providers and users
- develop standards for interoperable research data management
- create a common basis for data protection, sovereignty, integrity and quality
- establish services and ensure international connectivity
NFDI Consortia by Target Group
Humanities and Social Sciences
Consortia with participation of Tübingen scientists:
Text+ - Language- and Textbased Research Data Infrastructure (Literary Studies, Linguistics)
NFDI4Memory - Historically Oriented Humanities (Historical Sciences - funding will start March 2023)
NFDI4Objects - Material Remains of Human History (Archaeology - funding will start March 2023)
Further consortia:
BERD@NFDI - Business, Economic and Related Data (Economics, Business Studies)
KonsortSWD - Social, Educational, Behavioural and Economic Sciences (Social Sciences, Educational Sciences, Psychology, Business Studies)
NFDI4Culture - Research data on tangible and intangible cultural heritage (art history, media studies,...)
Life Sciences
Consortia with participation of Tübingen scientists:
DataPLANT - Democratization of plant research (Biology)
GHGA - German Human Genome-Phenome Archive (Medicine)
NFDI4Immuno - Infrastructure for Immunology (Medicine - funding will start March 2023)
Further consortia:
NFDI4Health - Personal health data (Medicine)
NFDI4Microbiota - Microbiota Research (Microbiology)
NFDI4BIOIMAGE - Microscopy and Bioimage Analysis (Biomedicine and further Disciplines - funding will start March 2023)
Natural Sciences
Consortia with participation of Tübingen scientists:
DAPHNE4NFDI - DAta from PHoton- and Neutron Experiments (Physics)
NFDI4Earth - Earth System Sciences (Geosciences)
NFDI4Objects - Material Remains of Human History (Archaeology - funding will start March 2023)
Further consortia:
FAIRmat - Condensed-Matter Physics and the Chemical Physics of Solids (Physics, Chemistry)
MaRDI - Consortium of Mathematics (Mathematics)
NFDI4Biodiversity - Biodiversity, Ecology and Environmental Data (Biology)
NFDI4Cat - Digital Future of Catalysis (Physics)
NFDI4Chem - Chemistry Consortium (Chemistry)
NFDI4DataScience - Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (Computer Science)
NFDIxCS - Infrastructure for and with Computer Science (Computer Science - funding will start March 2023)
Other Initiatives and Services at the University
At the University, development of infrastructure for the management of research data is being worked on within various projects and institutions. These include:
HPC - High Performance Computing
High-Performance Computing (HPC) refers to computer-aided calculations, i.e. computational work that requires high computing power or storage capacity to process. The University offers the following services in this area:
BinAC - Bioinformatics and Astrophysics Research Cluster | part of the bwHPC initiative
bwSFS - Storage for Science | storage system for communities of the HPC clusters Nemo and BinAC
CITAR - Citing and Archiving Research | long-term archiving for HPC users
Research Data Centers
Since 2019, four research data centers are funded by the state of Baden-Württemberg. Within the data centers, researchers are to work closely with computing centers and libraries to enable access to and use of digital data collections. The University of Tübingen is involved in the following research data center:
BioDATEN - Bioinformatics Data Environment
Virtual Research Environments
Virtual or Digital Research Environments are working platforms designed to enable scientists to conduct research together at different locations at the same time. These types of research environments offer, for example, software services and communication networks and integrate different resources. At the University of Tübingen, the following virtual research environments related to RDM exist:
IMeRa - Integrated Mobile Health Research Platform (Life Sciences)
Spacialist - VRE for the Spatial Humanities (Humanities)
CRC Subprojects INF
Information Management and Information Infrastructure in Collaborative Research Centers (INF) can be applied for as a subproject in Collaborative Research Centers (CRC) or CRC/Transregio (TRR) of the DFG. They serve to develop and implement project-specific data management concepts and to establish and operate the associated infrastructure. INF projects in which the University of Tübingen has participated to date are listed below:
TRR 209 - Liver Cancer: INF Standardized Biobanking, Evaluation of Human Sample and Model Systems, Databases, Bioinformatics | Life Sciences | 2017 - 2022
CRC 1253 - CAMPOS: INF Data Infrastructure and Data Communication Environments | Geosciences | 2017 - 2021
CRC 833 - The Construction of Meaning: INF Heterogeneous Primary Research Data - Representation and Processing | Humanities and Social Sciences | 2009 - 2021
EU Funding
The following projects and initiatives related to RDM are or were funded by the EU:
GDI - European Genomic Data Infrastructure | Life Sciences | 2022 - 2026
EOSC-Life - Building a Digital Space for the Life Sciences | Biology | 2019 - 2023
SSHOC - Social Sciences & Humanities Open Cloud | Humanities and Social Sciences | 2019 - 2022
EOSC-Hub - Integrated Services For The European Open Science Cloud | Humanities & Social Sciences | 2019 - 2020
PARTHENOS - Pooling Activities, Resources and Tools for Heritage E-research Networking, Optimization and Synergies | Humanities & Social Sciences | 2015 - 2019
Federal Government, DFG and Foundation Funding
The following projects and initiatives related to RDM are or were funded by the federal government, the DFG or foundations:
CLARIAH-DE | Humanities and Social Sciences | Federal Government | 2019 - 2021
de.NBI - German Network for Bioinformatics Infrastructure | Bioinformatics | Federal Government | 2014 - 2021
CLARIN-D - Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure | Humanities and Social Sciences | Federal Government | 2016 - 2020
LAPPS-CLARIN | Humanities and Social Sciences | Foundation | 2016 - 2018
NaLiDa - Center for Sustainability of Linguistic Data | Humanities and Social Sciences | DFG | 2013 - 2016
State Funding
The following projects and initiatives related to RDM are or were funded by the state of Baden-Württemberg:
ANOVAGET - Annotation and Visualization of Genomic and Transcriptomic Data for Molecular Tumor Boards | Life Sciences | 2021 - 2022
IDEM - Integrated Digital Consent Management for Clinical and Research | Life Sciences | 2021 - 2022
ORDP - Open Research Data Portal | all disciplines | 2016 - 2019
ViCE - Virtual Open Science Collaboration Environment | Humanities and Social Sciences | 2016 - 2018