bwFDM Communities
A Research Data Management
Initiative in the State of
Baden-Wuerttemberg
Karlheinz Pappenberger
London, 44th LIBER Annual Conference, 25/06/2015
University of Konstanz, Germany
Overview
1) The e-science initiative in Baden-Wuerttemberg
2) bwFDM communities: a research data management project
3) bwFDM communities: results
4) Concluding remarks
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1) The e-science initiative in Baden-Wuerttemberg
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9 universities in Baden-Wuerttemberg in numbers
Universities in
Baden-Wuerttemberg
Academic Staff
(all: 30,300)
Students
(all: 176,000)
Heidelberg*
5,500
31,500
Tübingen*
4,450
27,200
Freiburg
6,800
24,700
Stuttgart
3,350
24,600
Karlsruhe
6,000
24,500
Mannheim
1,000
12,300
Konstanz*
1,250
11,800
950
9,900
1,050
9,500
Hohenheim
Ulm
* = member of the group of 11 German universities with nationally funded
institutional strategies within the German top-level research initiative
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The e-science initiative in Baden-Wuerttemberg (I)
The concept paper
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E-Science – Science in a New Environment. Further development of the scientific
infrastructure in Baden-Wuerttemberg.
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Published 29th July 2014, 120 pages (only available in German)
Edited by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts
3.7 million euro for working out action plans
5 defined action areas
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Licensing electronic information media
Digitisation
Open access
Research data management
Virtual research environments
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The e-science initiative in Baden-Wuerttemberg (II)
The concept paper – chapter 4: research data management
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Written by a working group of 10 members, lead by the ministry and with
representatives from
− Computing centres
− Data centres
− Libraries
− Researcher communities
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Recommendations
− Further development of technical “bw“-infrastructure
− Establishing research data management within teaching and curricula
− Countrywide research data repository
− Data life cycle labs
− Coordination of policies, legal issues and standardisation questions
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2) bwFDM communities: a federal research data
management project
bwFDM = Baden-Wuerttemberg Forschungsdatenmanagement
(Baden-Wuerttemberg research data management)
as part of several existing and planned IT-driven “bw“-tools:
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bwHPC:
high-performance computing
bwSync&Share: joint sharing and synchronisation of data
bwFileStorage: additional countrywide storage capacity
bwIDM:
identity management
bwMS:
licensing of Microsoft software
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bwCloud*:
federal virtualisation of server and IT-services
bwDataArchiv*: long term preservation of data
bwDataDiss*: research data of dissertations
….
* = project status
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bwFDM communities: the quest for
effective research support
Background: the data landscape
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Data life cycle
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Complex and large scale data
− Relevant for a growing number of
science disciplines
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Intelligent data management and analysis
creates more high-quality research and
publications
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bwFDM communities – the project
Funding
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Funder: Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts
Baden-Wuerttemberg
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Funding period: 2014/01 – 2015/06
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Budget: 1 million euro
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Staff: 9 full time key accounters (one at each university)
1 project coordinator
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Project lead: Steinbuch Computing Centre Karlsruhe Institute of Technology
− Main project partners: computing centres at the 9 universities
− Associated: libraries
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“What infrastructure and
services are needed to make
the region a global leading area
in research and development?“
Improving scientific research in Baden-Wuerttemberg in
context of the e-science strategy
Main question & project goal of bwFDM: how to do this?
 executing a comprehensive survey
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Detailed recommendations for concrete steps
Definition of future projects and tasks
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bwfdm.scc.kit.edu/english
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bwFDM: the research communities
and the survey
The observed research data
landscape in Baden-Wuerttemberg
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3000 different research groups
− Applied sciences
− Life sciences incl. medicine
− Social sciences
− Humanities
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700 interviews with researchers
(approx. 1h each research group)
 “How are you working?“
 “What are your needs?“
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2550 user stories extracted
from the interviews
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Survey: 30 open & closed questions / example:
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bwFDM: milestones of the survey
List of research groups and contact persons (from Feb 2014 onwards)
Guideline for interviews
Interviewing researchers and transforming the results into a machine readable format
(Feb 2014 to Nov 2014)
Extracting “user stories“ / statements and collecting them in a database (Nov 2014 to
Feb 2015)
Compiling thematic areas and building working groups on them (from Feb 2015 onwards)
Grouping user stories in story maps (from Feb 2015 onwards)
Report / presentation of results and recommendations to the ministry
(17th July 2015, summary in English  sharing information)
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3) bwFDM communities: results
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a) General requirements and policy framework
(1) Legal Issues: intellectual property rights, copyright and data protection
Advice and expertise in IPR and data protection / publishing data
− Information centre / contact person
Fewer legal restrictions in IPR and data protection
− When using data from others
Stronger property rights
− For own collected and processed data
IT infrastructure that fulfills data protection requirements
− When sharing data (within a project group)
− When archiving data
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a) General requirements and policy framework
(2) Information services
56 % of the interviewed groups don´t feel well-informed about RDM
Advice and expertise in RDM
− Newsletter (40 %)
− Information platform (40 %)
− Information centre / contact person (35 %)
− Training / tutorials (30 %)
− RDM guideline / RDM policy (8 %)
− RDM teaching courses (3 %)
− General information requests in RDM (20 %)
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a) General requirements and policy framework
(3) Scientific culture on data
50 % are satisfied with the availability of data, 50 % are not
55 % have data that might be of interest to others but don´t share
Incentives
Status quo: Limited exchange of data in scientific communities
− Time
− Personal risk / career
To be solved within the scientific community and the funding organizations
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b) Technical framework
(1) Standards and formats
− Software
− Types of files, exchange formats
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c) Data collection and data sharing
(1) Access to commercial and governmental data / data of NGOs
(2) Digitization
− Articulated mainly in humanities
− Using digitized material / active digitization of material
(3) Scientific cooperation:
− Management and exchange of data
unsatisfactory at the moment:
50 % email / USB-stick
20 % dropbox
18 % server
12 % other (e.g. bwSync&Share)
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Virtual research environments
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d) IT infrastructure / IT support
Storage
− Very often named
− Efficient access (speed, simplicity)
− Archiving facilities: 10 years +
Computing power / high performance computing needs
Hardware
− Special requirements
− Easier and more flexible purchasing
− Money
Software / Software tools
− Access to specialist software
IT support
− Support for using IT infrastructure
− data processing support
− [more IT staff on the research group level]
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e) Preservation
(1) Documentation of projects and data
Project documentation / documentation of data
− RDM plan and guidelines
− RDM information centre
− Accompanying consulting by a RDM expert
− Support for data curation
− Research information system for documentation
Metadata
− Metadata standards
− Professional staff for data enrichment with metadata / automation
Stronger property rights
− For own collected and processed data
IT infrastructure that fulfills data protection requirements
− When sharing data (within a project group)
− When archiving data
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e) Preservation
(2) Data repositories
Articulated demand
− Central / structured / curated
Both disciplinary and interdisciplinary
Definable access rules
Visualization of data
Finding data / using data of others
− General search engine for data
− Access to high-quality data
(3) Archiving
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Results f) – i)
f) Licensing (campus)
− Software
g) Funding / financial issues
− More money at the research group level
h) Open Science / Open Data / Open Access
− Open source software
− Data curation
− Trust
i) Reservations about RDM
− Efficiency, special needs, bureaucracy, time pressure
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4) Concluding remarks
Political dimension
− e-science-initiative…  recognized importance of RDM in Baden-Wuerttemberg;
bwFDM survey may form the nucleus for a broad RDM infrastructure deployment in BW
− But keep in mind: state BW strategy versus international cross-linked research
Researcher dimension
− bwFDM bares the existing gap between research and infrastructure
− bwFDM offers a huge and unique dataset of various researcher interests
− Certainly not only representative of researchers in Baden-Wuerttemberg
Infrastructure dimension
− IT driven project, but: fraction of answers covers less technical needs than expected
and much more heterogeneous than expected
− Several players: computing centres, data centres, libraries, …
− A lot of distributed expertise in infrastructure
− Important: cooperation
− Within an institution and also on a state/national/international level
− Not all issues can be solved on a local infrastructural level
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Thank you
Very much!
Karlheinz Pappenberger
Subject Librarian for economics and statistics
Specialist for research data management
University of Konstanz - KIM
karlheinz.pappenberger@uni-konstanz.de
University of Konstanz, Germany