Research Data Management
Open Repositories 2024
28 June 2024, by FDM Webmaster

Photo: Jacob
Open Repositories 2024
From 3 to 6 June 2024 the international "Conference on Open Repositoriess" took place for the 19th time. This time in Gothenburg, Sweden. A total of 420 participants attended workshops, 32 posters, 130 presentations, lightning talks and panels.
The CRDM team participated with a lecture (What defines trust? Can general-purpose repositories be certified at all?) and two posters ("Connecting ELN to Repositories – connecting daily work to long-term transparency", "Out-of-the-Box Repository Configuration: Supporting Small-Scale Research Community Visibility and Transparency") and used this opportunity to exchange ideas with the community.
The lecture "What defines trust? Can general-purpose repositories be certified at all?" dealt with challenges in the certification of research data repositories for the "Long Tail" of research data.
Research data repositories can specialize in the inclusion of data from certain domains, data of specific types or data from certain user groups. For data that does not fit into any of these grids, the so-called "long tail" of research data, there are generic repositories such as the RDR at the University of Hamburg. Certificates can help when selecting a repository. The common certification programs such as CTS or Nestor are very much tailored to repositories for clearly defined user groups and require a process of so-called "active preservation" in the repository's workflow, which many generic repositories will never be able to implement.
The presentation discussed various factors for "active preservation", such as technical aspects and format migration. In addition, suggestions were made as to how certification for generic repositories could be made possible by subjecting the requirements to a reality check.
The poster "Connecting ELN to Repositories – connecting daily work to long-term transparency" addresses electronic laboratory notebooks (ELN), which are a software solution for planning, conducting, evaluating and documenting laboratory experiments and can, for example, prevent data loss. In the medium term, they will replace analogue copies. Universität Hamburg is therefore currently testing a web-based open source solution called elabFTW. A transfer of selected data fields from ELN to the research data repository is planned in the future. It promotes data exchange, transparency and reproducibility, simplifies data management and storage processes and improves data discovery and citation.
The poster "Out-of-the-Box Repository Configuration: Supporting Small-Scale Research Community Visibility and Transparency" raised the question of data sustainability in small research projects whose data is available in heterogeneous formats and models and is accessible via applications that are difficult to maintain. The proposed solution presents a proof of concept of how the relevant meta and research data from registered individual applications can be automatically transferred to a research data repository via defined interfaces.
We are looking forward to the "Open Repositories 2025" in Chicago.