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Research Data Management

Services for researchers

We help JMU researchers manage, store, and publish the data they generate.

Data management plans

Many funding agencies have requirements for data management plans and data publishing. We can help you create these plans, assess the data management needs of your project, and identify data management solutions. This works best if you contact us in a timely manner. Therefore, feel free to contact us for individual assistance at an early stage of your project proposal.

Technical infrastructure

Documenting research

To document research data in a more transparent and reproducible manner, the IT Centre provides JMU members with three elelctronic lab notebooks.

Chemotion ELN

Chemotion ELN is an Open Source Electronic Labratory Notebook for chemical research. Chemotion ELN is equipped with the functionalities to acquire and process chemical data, in particular the work with molecular structures and calculations based on molecular properties. It is developed by NFDI4Chem under the leadership of KIT Karlsruhe. JMU offers its own Chemotion ELN instance at the IT Centre.

eLabFTW

ELabFTW is an Open Source Electronic Labratory Notebook that is often used in the natural sciences, however, due to its great flexibility it is suited for different scientific subjects. For instance, it offers an integrated data base for laboratory equipment or samples, templates for experiments, a scheduler (e.g. for large devices in the lab), a Markdown editor, and a connection to the DFN timestamp service. The IT Centre of the JMU operates an eLabFTW instance for JMU members.

Labfolder

Labfolder is an ELN that is especially tailored to the needs in the life sciences. The commercial software is offered by the Berlin-based company Labforward. JMU has concluded a contract with this company for rental licenses for the use of Labfolder. The ELN is operated on a local server of the IT Centre. Personal Labfolder licenses can be ordered for a fee in the WebShop.

Generating, preparing and analyzing research data

The IT Centre offers a HPC cluster with sufficient computing power to generate, process and analyze large amounts of data.

Further information on the HPC-Cluster

Storing research data

Clouds are useful storage solutions if you want to share files or simultaneously edit files in a working group. Clouds also synchronize folders and files across all internet-enabled devices, thus data can be accessed from anywhere. Besides, clouds mostly offer a version history to track the work progress in a group.

JMU currently offers two clouds.

bwSync&Share

bwSync&Share is a DFN cloud service for research and teaching operated by the Steinbuch Centre for Computing (SCC) at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The data is located on the servers of the SCC at KIT. The standard storage space is 50 GB. However, it can be increased to up to 200 GB. The cloud service can be ordered for a fee via the WebShop. Guests can also access the cloud if they are invited. However, they do not have their own storage quota.

Dropbox Education

Dropbox Education is a smart workspace for time- and location-independent team collaboration. The service is operated by Dropbox Inc. based in the USA. The data is stored at rest on servers in Frankfurt a. Main. The standard storage capacity is 15 GB, but can be expanded. Dropbox-Education can be ordered for a fee via the WebShop.

Data requiring special protection should only be stored encrypted in the cloud. We recommend the software Cryptomator or Veracrypt.

Individual storage space

For research data that is not to be shared with others, JMU provides each university member with an individual storage space on the JMU servers (Personal network drive J:). The standard free storage capacity is 5 GB. However, it can be increased for scientists via the webshop for a fee.

Storage space for working groups and projects

If you want to store shared documents in one place so that several people at JMU have access to the files, you can apply for storage space for working groups and projects in the WebShop (so-called institutional network drives L:).

Rights management: The group administrator specifies the access rights of each group member to the network drive in the user portal. In general, access rights can be defined at the two top folder levels. The rights are then passed on to the lower levels.

Further information on network drives

Research data located on the network drives (personal network drive, institutional network drive) are stored centrally on servers in the IT Centre. All network drives are integrated into the regular backups of the IT Centre. To access the data outside the university-wide data network, a VPN connection is required.

Data with no special protection requirements can be stored on the network drives. Research data with a higher protection requirement, for example personal data, should only be stored on the network drives in a pseudonomized version with additional encryption. We recommend the software Cryptomator or Veracrypt.

If you want to exchange large files bidirectionally with research partners inside or outside the university, you can use GigaMove. Files can be stored in GigaMove between 7 to 14 days and made available to other people via a link by mail. Files up to 100 GB in size can be exchanged via the file upload service. In total, all employees of the University of Würzburg have access to 1 TB of storage on the system.

GigaMove is a service operated by RWTH Aachen University. The data exchange takes place via a server at RWTH Aachen. The service is not recommended for confidential and personal data. If such data is sent via GigaMove, the files should always be encrypted beforehand.

Server housing of hardware servers

If you are part of a research group that has its own storage system that you would like to administer yourself, and you are looking for the safest possible location for it, you can make use of the IT Centre’s infrastructure. The IT Centre provides decentralized, air-conditioned and access-restricted server rooms as well as a secured power supply in compliance with fire regulations.

Server housing of virtual machines

If you want to set up, store and evaluate specific applications in a research group and need an infrastructure, you can rent a virtual server in a VMware vSphere environment at the IT Centre’s WebShop. This eliminates the need for you to procure and operate your own server hardware. Your responsibilities are limited to installing and configuring your application and administering the virtual machine.

Publishing and archiving research data

If you want to publish research data according to the FAIR principles, you can use the institutional research data repository WueData at the University of Würzburg.

WueData makes it possible

  • to publish a wide range of data types.
  • to describe the data with metadata so that the data publication can be found easily.
  • to choose an (open) license to make copyrights more transparent.
  • to assign a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) to the data thus the data publication can be found permanently.
  • to add study documents to the research data to increase re-usability.
  • to store the data locally on servers at JMU, including backup.
  • to guarantee a minimum retention period of 10 years.

To the website of  WueData

You have larger amounts of research data that you no longer actively need in the research process? You would like to store this data in a secure location for 10 years according to good research practice? Then as a member of JMU you can use the archive server of the IT Centre. However, the archive server is not suitable for storing research data according to the FAIR Data Principles. WueData is available for this purpose.

Further information on the archive server

Individual consulting

We can help you understand your data management needs and recommend best practices for keeping your data usable, now and in the future.

We are available to advise you on the following topics:

  • Creation of a data management plan
  • Data organization and storage
  • Legal and ethical aspects
  • Publication and archiving of research data

Events and materials

Data management skills are essential for researchers who want to increase the quality of their data and thus their scientific publications on the one hand and improve scientific transparency on the other. Our events and materials are open to all JMU members at all stages of their academic career. They give you insight into the different stages of the research data lifecycle and teach you how to manage data more efficiently and to share it with other researchers.

Contact

For help with your data management needs, contact the responsible member of the RDM-Team or email us at rdm@uni-wuerzburg.de.
 
RDM services are an evolving set of services. We welcome your feedback on our services, as well as your input on what kind of data management services you would find most relevant.