info: DataverseNO

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

DataverseNO welcomes OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University as a partner institution. With its own institutional collection in DataverseNO, OsloMet can now offer their researchers a certified and curated data repository where they can make their data openly available and thus make their research more visible, and promote competence on open research.

DataverseNO welcomes the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research (NIBIO) as a partner institution. With its own institutional collection (https://dataverse.no/dataverse/nibio) in DataverseNO, NIBIO can now offer their researchers a certified and curated data repository where they can make their data openly available and thus make their research more visible, and promote competence on open research. For more information about the NIBIO-collection in DataverseNO, contact Hanne Tvete.

Due to a major service upgrade, DataverseNO will not be available for any action requiring login (deposit, curation, administration) from Friday March 24 after 16:00 CET until and including Tuesday March 28, 2023. In addition, on Monday March 27 and Tuesday March 28, DataverseNO may also be unavailable for discovery and download in shorter periods. We apologize for any inconvenience. For questions, please contact the DataverseNO Team at support@dataverse.no.

DataverseNO welcomes the University of Oslo (UiO) as a partner institution. With its own institutional collection (https://dataverse.no/dataverse/uio) in DataverseNO, UiO can now offer their researchers a certified and curated data repository where they can make their data openly available and thus make their research more visible, and promote competence on open research. For more information, see the UiO website: https://www.ub.uio.no/english/writing-publishing/data-archiving/dataverse-uio.html.

The working paper “Towards a European network of FAIR-enabling Trustworthy Digital Repositories (TDRs)”, which just has been published on Zenodo (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7034314). This paper is the initiative of a broad author team consisting of stakeholders from the European repository community. It details a vision of how the Network could be created and what next steps need to be taken to make this a reality. The paper was created in continuation of the workshop that was held in January 2022 (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5849658), in which a large part of the community indicated a desire for this Network.

The core of the paper describes the main functions the Network should have to address the main challenges in the community: Networking and knowledge exchange, stakeholder advocacy and engagement, and coordination and development. The functions and accompanying activities are described and depicted to show the potential of the Network. Next, the paper describes the steps that need to be taken to further detail and develop the Network, including membership, business model, and governance.

The paper was created with input from the European repository community, as a consultation questionnaire was extended to the community in June 2022. The published paper will serve as input for the EOSC Task Force on Long Term Digital Preservation (https://www.eosc.eu/advisory-groups/long-term-data-preservation). One of the core activities mentioned in the charter of this Task Force is to produce recommendations on the creation of such a network.

UiT and DataverseNO are happy to have contributed to this paper. Thank you to Ingrid Dillo, Maaike Verburg, and Vasso Kalaitzi from DANS (https://dans.knaw.nl/en/) for initiating and coordinating this work!

DataverseNO welcomes VID Specialized University as a partner institution. With its own institutional collection (https://dataverse.no/dataverse/vid) in DataverseNO, VID can now offer their researchers a certified and curated data repository where they can make their data openly available and thus make their research more visible, and promote competence on open research.

DataverseNO welcomes MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society as a partner institution. With its own institutional collection (https://dataverse.no/dataverse/mf) in DataverseNO, MF can now offer their researchers a certified and curated data repository where they can make their data openly available and thus make their research more visible, and promote competence on open research.

DataverseNO welcomes Østfold University College as a partner institution. With the institutional collection Østfold University College Open Research Data (https://dataverse.no/dataverse/hiof), HiØ can now offer their researchers a certified and curated data repository where they can make their data openly available and thus make their research more visible, and promote competence on open research.

On March 26, DataverseNO was informed that the Board of CoreTrustSeal had approved our application for CoreTrustSeal certification. The CoreTrustSeal is a quality seal of approval for sustainable and trustworthy research data repositories.

DataverseNO (https://dataverse.no/ and https://info.dataverse.no/) is a national, generic repository for open research data that is currently used by 9 universities and university colleges in Norway, and the certification covers all institutional collections in the repository.

—This is a milestone for DataverseNO, and we are very pleased to be able to offer a certified repository to our partner institutions, says Johanne Raade, library director at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, and chair of DataverseNO board.

Through the CoreTrustSeal certification, data repositories demonstrate that they meet a number of requirements for both technical infrastructure and stewardship model and routines. In total, 15 qualification requirements are included in the CoreTrustSeal certification, and DataverseNO meets 14 of them at the highest level (“The guideline has been fully implemented in the repository”). As part of the certification process, we have developed a comprehensive set of guidelines for the repository, the DataverseNO Policy Framework.

We are looking forward to continuing the good work of DataverseNO together with our partner institutions and to further developing the repository so that we at any time can provide Norwegian researchers with an infrastructure that supports them in making their research data as FAIR as possible.