SCOOP-IT: An RDM Journey of Two Universities

Research Data Management (RDM) is attracting more and more attention and effort, both from researchers and funding agencies, as well as IT personnel from different areas (research support, data science, storage and infrastructure, etc.). This is reflected in the CIT's ongoing project aimed at developing an RDM System for the University, as well as in a more specific project, called SCOOP-IT.

SCOOP-IT

SCOOP-IT aims to provide an RDM environment for a large research project, called Sustainable Cooperation (SCOOP) that is funded through an NWO Gravitation grant and brings together researchers mainly from UG and Utrecht University, but also from VU Amsterdam, EU Rotterdam and Radboud University.

To build the RDM environment, the CIT has partnered with the Research IT department at Utrecht University. This collaboration has already managed to deploy a working RDM environment based on the the Yoda software from Utrecht and running on UG infrastructure. The RDM environment is expected to be launched by the end of February, and an announcement of the launch date will be made in due time.

This partnership between Groningen and Utrecht has also been beneficial for the CIT's own efforts at building an RDM System, by taking advantage of the more extensive experience that Utrecht University has in the field of Research Data Management. Furthermore, the two teams keep in close contact, in an effort to keep their respective systems compatible and, perhaps, part of a larger Dutch RDM eco-system.

The importance of such a collaboration was publicly recognized at the Surf Super Day, on December 18th, where a joint presentation was given on the SCOOP-IT project and the Groningen-Utrecht collaboration, with its inevitable challenges. Working with two distinct teams, spatially separated, on such a complex system is definitely challenging, but the challenges can be met, and the collaboration is definitely worthwhile.