With digitisation of research, from data acquisition to electronic paper publication, and following the so-called "Data Life-Cycle Management" (DLCM), researchers are being confronted to a rapidly increasing amount of data to handle. Also, to catch up with the new directives in research data management required by funding agencies and publishers, we have launched the Swiss DLCM project.
The outcomes of this project are expected to provide researchers with :
- A DMP template adapted to the Swiss research communities and compliant with the main funders (e.g., Swiss National Science Foundation, Horizon 2020, etc.);
- Guidelines for Researchers and Information Professionals on research data management (including guidelines for data and metadata dissemination) to encourage the use of best practices in data management;
- A policy template for higher education institutions (HEI), which can be used to establish sound policies to manage research data with all related issues (such as data privacy, intellectual property, storage costs, etc.);
- A National Portal on research data management with recommended tools and practices for researchers and information professionals;
- A toolbox for building SIP, AIP, and DIP OAIS packages from subsets of research data (including graphic user interfaces adapted to different tools);
- A prototype of a scalable OAIS-compliant infrastructure;
- Business models for the delivery of viable long-term preservation services;
- An inventory of existing data management training modules, including expert networks in collaboration with other Swiss and international projects;
- Specific data management training modules and teaching modules for integration into Library Information Systems (LIS) courses.
The DLCM project involves eight partners institutions. It was initiated on September 1st, 2015 following a two-year period of maturation. Given that each partner institution has already major issues in data management to resolve, the involved national funding program provided us with the just-in-time opportunity to gather our respective forces and to grapple with this important and complex topic so as to serve the whole Swiss research community.