Radboudumc Technology Center Data stewardship

Our impact

We collaborate with internal and external partners to share knowledge and develop new solutions and platforms for research data management.

Many researchers recognize the importance of research data management and the FAIR principles, however, applying them is often difficult and time-consuming. We aim to address this by:

• Providing clear guidelines and instructions;
• Developing secure & intuitive tools and infrastructure;
• Sharing knowledge and connecting experts.

Policy and guidelines

Throughout the Research Data Lifecycle, policy and guidelines apply. These documents are available on Qportal and IQS. Read them before you start your project.

Policies and guidelines on Qportal

• General Radboud policy
• Integral Quality System (IQS)
• SOP Research Data Management (RDM)
• SOP Management and archiving of scientific human-related research ('Beheer en archivering wetenschappelijk mensgebonden onderzoek')

Example text for Data Management Plan (DMP)

Use the DMPonline tool to prepare your DMP and make use of the guidelines and example answers for each topic. Make sure to use the Radboudumc template, also when preparing a DMP for funders such as ZonMW and NWO.

FAIR manual on Qportal

Making your data FAIR is a challenging task. For researchers it is difficult to decide where to start and what choices to make in the process. To help researchers, we are drafting a FAIR manual that guides you step-by-step to apply the FAIR principles to research data. When the manual is ready it will become available in Radboudumc's Qportal.

Open Science

Open Science is about free access to scientific knowledge, data and methods throughout a research project, increasing cooperation, transparency and reproducibility of research.

Three important aspects of Open Science are:

1. Pre-registration of your research project, allows you to claim your ideas in an early stage, and increases the credibility of your results. Many journals (>300) also use the Registered reports publishing format: methods and proposed analyses are pre-registered and peer-reviewed prior to research being conducted. Manuscripts that survive pre-study peer review receive an in-principle acceptance that will not be revoked based on the outcomes, but only on failings of quality assurance, following through on the registered protocol, or unresolvable problems in reporting clarity or style.
2. Open access to methods for data collection and analysis. This makes your results more reproducible, enhancing the value of your findings. Moreover, other researchers can credit your work when they reuse your methods and procedures.
3. Open access to research data so that others can verify your results, and reuse your data.

More information by Radboud University and partners

For more information on Open Science, contact the experts at the RU Library, or visit the following websites:

• Open Science - Universiteitsbibliotheek RU
• Open Science - Nationaal Programma Open Science
• Center for Open Science

FAIR principles

The FAIR principles help to make your data have impact beyond your research project and publications, and increase the visibility of your scientific achievements.

Making data FAIR

FAIR is an acronym for ‘Findable’, ‘Accessible’, ‘Interoperable’ and ‘Reusable’.

• Findable: The first step in (re)using data is to find them. Metadata and data should be easy to find for both humans and computers. Machine-readable metadata are essential for automatic discovery of datasets and services, so this is an essential component of the FAIRification process.
• Accessible: Once the user finds the required data, they need to know how can the data be accessed, possibly including authentication and authorization.
• Interoperable: The data usually need to be integrated with other data. In addition, the data need to interoperate with applications or workflows for analysis, storage, and processing.
• Reusable: The ultimate goal of FAIR is to optimize the reuse of data. To achieve this, metadata and data should be well-described so that they can be replicated and/or combined in different settings.

More information by Radboud University

The Radboud University has established the following minimum requirements concerning data "FAIRness": 'Research data underlying scientific publications authored by Radboud University or Radboudumc employees should be Findable and Accessible.'

The FAIR guidelines are known to many researchers but are not yet universally applied in practice. We at Radboudumc are obliged to have all research data comply at least with the F (sustainably findable) and the A (proper access management). Read more on the website of the Radboud University.