UiT is focusing on reliable and future-oriented infrastructure and support services for research data

UiT The Arctic University of Norway is part of two project consortia that have just succeeded in the competition for funds for two EU projects. Both projects are led by CSC – IT Center for Science in Finland and are about further developing the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC).

The project FIDELIS – A European Network of Trustworthy Digital Repositories aims to establish a European network of reliable repositories for research data and other digital research objects. The call for funding for this project originates from a working paper published by key players in 2022. The project is a collaboration between 24 institutions from across Europe.

The project EDEN – Enhancing Digital Preservation Strategies at European and National Level will develop and establish a framework to identify what data are candidates to long-term preservation based on use, benefit, and quality and a model for re-appraisal points along the data lifecycle and test usability after data archiving. The call for these funds is a follow-up to the recommendations from the EOSC Long-Term Data Preservation Task Force. A total of 16 institutions from several European countries will collaborate in this project.

Both projects will last for three years and are planned to start in January 2025. UiT is represented in the two projects through the teams working with DataverseNO and TROLLing at the University Library (UB).

DataverseNO is a national, generalist repository for research data, launched in 2017, and is today a collaboration between 16 partner institutions. From the very beginning, we have been committed to building and operating a reliable data repository for researchers from Norwegian research organizations regardless of domain and data type, and in line with international requirements and recommendations for good data management, such as the well-established FAIR principles. As one of the first national services in the world, DataverseNO was CoreTrustSeal certified as a Trusted Digital Repository in 2020, and we are now – somewhat delayed – in the process of renewing this certification.

TROLLing is a specialized repository for research data from linguistics and language studies. The repository was launched in 2014 and is through the national CLARINO node part of the European CLARIN infrastructure.

Both repositories are managed by UB in collaboration with the IT Department (ITA), and – in the case of TROLLing – the Department of Language and Culture (ISK) at the HSL Faculty at UiT. Endorsed by Eallju – Developing the High North: UiT’s strategy towards 2030, the two repositories are an important part of UiT’s strategic work to promote Open Science and develop the field in close cooperation with national and international partners.

Several people involved in the management of DataverseNO and TROLLing have been active in international communities and networks working with infrastructure and support services for research data management, e.g., CLARIN, the Global Dataverse Community Consortium (GDCC), and the Research Data Alliance (RDA).

The community around DataverseNO has also initiated a national curation network for FAIR research data, which will be an important platform to enable competency building and upskilling in the field of research data management across institutions and support services, and which will be an important component of a future EOSC competence centre and the future national EOSC node in Norway.

We hope that our experiences with the development and management of repository services and networks related to research data management will contribute positively to the two new EU projects. At the same time, we are convinced that our project participation will enhance our competency and skills at UiT and will benefit the further development of our two repository services. In particular, this applies to the further integration of our services with EOSC. Our overarching goal is always to offer good support services to our researchers and in this way contribute to research at the national and international forefront.

We are very pleased to be part of the two project consortia and look forward to inspiring and fruitful collaboration.

 

Contact person:
Philipp Conzett
Email: philipp.conzett@uit.no