Funding agencies, journals, and academic institutions often require research data to be published according to the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) data principles (Wilkinson et al., Scientific Data, 2016). To achieve this, every step of the research process needs to be accurately documented. Furthermore, data need to be securely stored, backed-up and annotated with sufficient metadata to allow publication and reusability of data, and to ensure reproducibility of results. The use of an integrated Electronic Lab Notebook (ELN) and Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), with data management capabilities, can help researchers towards this goal. For over 10 years, Scientific IT Services (SIS) of ETH Zürich and its forerunner unit have actively developed such a platform, openBIS, in close collaboration with scientists. openBIS (https://openbis.ch/) is an open source software that can be used free of charge by any organization. However, implementation of a collaborative research data management platform requires dedicated IT resources and skills that some research groups and institutes do not have. With openRDM.swiss, ETH SIS addresses this concern and offers research data management as a service to the Swiss research community, based on the openBIS software platform.
In this demonstration we will provide an overview of the capabilities of openBIS. In particular, we will present the following features: inventory for materials and protocols, lab notebook, data management capabilities, support for analysis tools (e.g. Jupyter notebooks) and integration with research data repositories. Furthermore, a summary of the support categories offered as part of the openRDM.swiss service will be given.