Source: Own illustration © RWTH Aachen
Recently, the IT Center Blog team reported on the large-scale project “The Archive Migration” – What has happened so far” of the IT Center and RWTH Aachen University. By 30 June 2022, the archive migration should be completed and all classified archive nodes transferred to Coscine and the DigitalArchive. Archiving research data has already been possible with Coscine since last year. In this article, we address some queries from researchers and explain the background to why you should archive your research data with Coscine.
What is research data to be archived?
Research data refers to results from scientific research such as laboratory values, measurement data, survey or observation data, corpora, simulations and many other data. Research data to be archived includes all data that is permanently required for the project context, for example in order to act in accordance with good scientific practice. It is important to maintain a structured way of handling your own research data. You can find out how to choose the right way to handle your data and which points need to be considered for implementation in the RDM-DFG “Checklist for Applicants for Planning and Describing the Handling of Research Data in Research Projects“.
Why should research data be archived?
Especially the re-usability for other researchers plays an increasingly important role and is part of the research data life cycle. Coscine supports you at several stages of the research data lifecycle, from storage to archiving, see point three “Storage and technical backup during the course of the project” and five “Data exchange and permanent accessibility of the data” of the RDM checklist of the German Research Foundation (DFG). In addition, archiving research data is an important criterion of good scientific practice, which is anchored both in the Higher Education Act of NRW and in the Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Research Practice [1,2].
What does archiving research data with Coscine mean?
To ensure that your archived research data comply with the above-mentioned recommendations and regulations, Coscine enables, among other things, a description of the data with metadata. Metadata can be entered conveniently via the web interface. In this way, Coscine supports the archiving of research data in accordance with the FAIR principles (“Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Re-Usable”). Points three and five from the DFG’s RDM checklist for appropriate handling of research data should also be taken into account here.
The more precisely you describe your research data with metadata, the more valuable your data treasure becomes. Coscine therefore provides you with various metadata schemas – such as EngMeta, a metadata schema for describing engineering research data. The subject-specific metadata schemas developed in the course of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) are also implemented in Coscine. After the end of the project, the research data will be stored for 10 years and can still be found via their persistent ID.
All information on archiving and metadata can also be found on our Coscine Help Pages:
Use Coscine for your archiving and start making your data FAIR and findable! Stay up to date and discover our updates in the IT Center Services status messages.
Read interesting facts about archive migration and the DigitalArchive on the IT Center Blog:
- The Archive Migration – What has Happened so far…
- Archiv Migration – The Big Move of Archived Data
- The Metadata Form – Migrate Archive Nodes via Metdata
- Archive becomes DigitalArchive
Learn more
If you have any questions about archive migration or Coscine in general, simply contact the ServiceDesk. The RDM and Archive Migration team look forward to hearing from you. For more information on Coscine, also visit the Coscine Help Pages and the Coscine short introduction pages.
[1] NRW HG § 3 Abs. 1
[2] Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Research Practice. (2019)
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Responsible for the content of this article are Lukas Bossert, Ilona Lang and Lina-Louise Kaulbach.
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