Development of the RDMS

In 2018, the UG & UMCG launched a long-term project to develop a data storage system that fulfills the requirements of modern scientific data management. The system was planned to be usable for both institutions and their researchers, to be centralized and managed by the CIT, and to be compliant with the FAIR principles.

With those initial requirements in mind, the Research Data Management System (RDMS) was conceived, and the project team started working on a viable product by gathering the input of researchers to define the further needs and requirements the system should cover. For historical context and an overview of the system’s original architecture and design rationale, see Tsyganov et al., The Research Data Management System at the University of Groningen: Architecture, Solution Engines and Challenges,” iRODS UGM 2021

In 2023, the RDMS was deemed ready to be offered as a service and exited its project status. Since the start of the project, the system has seen vast improvement and expanded functionality, and is seeing quite some success in being adopted by various research groups.

At present, the RDMS team is still collecting feedback from the researchers and continuously striving to improve its system. Therefore, we are always happy to receive your ideas and feedback. Do not hesitate to contact us!

While the basis of the RDMS is the data management software iRODS, the RDMS development team built a web interface to extend the functionalities of iRODS and make the platform more easily accessible for users.

While there are a lot of functionalities of the RDMS web interface, it was mainly written to facilitate:

• Management of user and their permissions,
• Management of groups and projects,
• Creation of metadata templates,
• Policy implementation,
• Management of metadata related to files and folders,
• Performance of actions following predefined workflows for scientific projects, such as archiving project data.

Since the beginning of 2022, the Digital Competence Center and its data stewards have joined the RDMS team and are constantly providing testing and quality assurance for the system. The RDMS is also actively being rolled out into various faculties of the UG, where we gather feedback on both the system itself as well as the auxiliary materials we developed, such as this RDMS wiki. We are also providing trainings for interested users, both on demand as well as on a planned schedule.

As stated above, part of the development of the RDMS is to assess the needs of our user community. We have adopted a way of working that focuses on user feedback and adaptation when the need arises. As such, we ask you to feel free to contact us if you have feedback or a request regarding the system. Any information you provide will be discussed within our team, and we will get back to you once we have reached a decision on your suggestion.

Finally, this wiki outlines the current functionalities of the RDMS, but it is in constant development. We are actively working on making this as complete and clear a manual as possible. Should you spot any information that is either missing or does not reflect the current state of the system, please contact us via rdms-support@rug.nl.