Flagships
The SND office and the universities in the SND Consortium work together to develop tools and methods to make it easier for researchers to share and reuse data. A key part of this work involves the so-called Flagships.
SND’s Flagships projects are time-limited initiatives designed to support open access to research data in a broad sense. They may be carried out in collaboration between Consortium universities and other higher education institutions or research organizations. A central idea behind the Flagship projects is that their results should benefit a wider audience than just the institutions and organizations that lead them.
Ongoing Flagship projects
Inter Arts Center and Lund University
IAC Art Files – A new solution for artistic research data
IAC Art Files is a joint initiative by the Inter Arts Center and the Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts at Lund University, focusing on the management of artistic research data and outputs in relation to the FAIR principles and the requirements for open research. As SND’s Flagship at Lund University for 2025–26, a system and portal will be developed to form the basis of a new, domain-specific repository. This repository will be built, tested, and integrated at the Faculty, with the potential for national use and further development after the end of the project.
The purpose of this project is to create solutions for a domain-oriented, stable, and sustainable system for categorizing, describing, sharing, and displaying artistic research data, compatible with other systems within the university and with SND’s portal Researchdata.se. Project goals include delivering technical solutions, establishing administrative procedures, investigating ethical and legal aspects, exploring the conceptual and practical framework of the term artistic research data, communicating opportunities to users, and evaluating the initial effort.
Contact: Hedvig Jalhed (hedvig.jalhed@mhm.lu.se)
Stockholm University
Certification of the Bolin Centre Database – a repository for climate, environmental, and earth system data at Stockholm University
The flagship project at Stockholm University aims to make the Bolin Centre Database a CoreTrustSeal certified repository. The database already meets several of the certification requirements, but not all. By more clearly integrating the database into the university's central research support, functions such as IT support, data curation, legal support, and e-archives will become more accessible to the repository, contributing to its development towards a more sustainable organization.
One of the long-term goals of SND’s collaboration is to create certified repositories at the HEIs in the network. The certification of Bolin Centre can serve as an example of how the process can proceed, and experiences from the project can be used to facilitate future certification work at HEIs.
Contact: Merlijn de Smit (merlijn.de.smit@su.se)
Chalmers and KTH
Metadata processes for data publication
The project aims to develop processes for the delivery of (meta)data to Researchdata.se. It will map current metadata flows in Sweden’s digital landscape and produce proposals for both technical and administrative processes to enable efficient (meta)data delivery between local organizations, such as higher education institutions and research infrastructure nodes, and a national platform for (meta)data publication.
Issues that the project will examine include:
- Which metadata should be delivered to ensure that data publications are traceable, and how these metadata elements should be delivered.
- How data delivery processes can be designed so that quality assurance is carried out appropriately throughout the process.
- How particularly valuable datasets can be identified and classified at different checkpoints over time.
- How processes and support can be designed to minimize the risk of exposing sensitive research data during (meta)data delivery to a national platform.
- How the higher education institution’s archival responsibility for registering research data generated or collected by its researchers can be ensured within delivery processes, including in cases where the research is conducted through larger collaborations, as well as where large datasets cannot be preserved solely by the institution itself.
Contact: Rosa Lönneborg (rosa@kth.se)
Chalmers
Research data management in practice: Analyzing barriers and enablers for FAIR and RDM
The project examines factors that influence researchers’ relationship with practices in research data management, open science and FAIR. The aim is to identify, analyze and quantify the barriers that affect researchers’ work, and to develop concrete, evidence-based strategies to increase the uptake of good data practices.
By analyzing historical and current data management plans at Chalmers University of Technology, in combination with quantitative and qualitative methods, the project will generate a deeper understanding of both structural challenges and user behaviour. Statistics and content from the Data Stewardship Wizard platform will be used to identify recurring barriers, variations between disciplinary fields, and particularly resource-intensive stages of the research process.
The project takes its starting point in national and European developments in open science, including SND’s mission and initiatives within the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC). The results are expected to contribute recommendations on how policies, support structures, and digital tools can be designed to better meet researchers’ needs and reduce the gap between policy and practice. The work will be carried out during 2026 and will result in a scientific publication.
Contact: Jeremy Azzopardi (jeremyaz@chalmers.se)
Karolinska Institutet
KI Data Repository – Phase 2: Integrate, certify and expose
This project further develops Karolinska Institutet’s data repository by taking the next step from established local storage to a coherent infrastructure in conjunction with DORIS and Researchdata.se. The project focuses on creating technical integrations that simplify the publication and management of datasets for both support services and researchers.
At the same time, preparations are being made for CoreTrustSeal certification to strengthen the repository’s long-term quality and reliability. The project is also developing metadata flows to KI’s own channels, including KI RIMS and ki.se; this will increase the visibility, transparency and reuse of KI’s data publications. The results will be documented as workflows and procedures that may also serve as guidance for other higher education institutions in the SND Network.
Contact: Fredrik Bengt Persson (fredrik.persson@ki.se)
Completed Flagship projects
Karolinska Institutet
KI Data Repository – Phase 1: interim solution for local storage without integration with DORIS
The Flagship project at Karolinska Institutet aims to create a solution where KI’s researchers can securely and in a structured way store sensitive data and make them accessible through SND’s catalogue. In the first phase (the Flagship project), this is done manually via the interim solution for local storage without integration with DORIS. (DORIS is SND’s system where researchers can describe and share research data.) Phase two will involve creating a permanent local storage solution with an integration between the university storage and SND (DORIS).
The storage issue is a central part of the work at universities to make research data accessible. The results from KI’s project can demonstrate how to create functional storage systems before a final integrated data storage is in place.
Contact: Fredrik Bengt Persson (fredrik.persson@ki.se)
Lund University
Preserved and accessible databases
Within the flagship project at Lund University, a process is being developed to make databases that are used and updated simultaneously accessible while preserving them in the long term. According to the inventory conducted at the university, researchers need to secure the operation and maintenance of databases over a longer period, especially after the project ends when funding is uncertain. The flagship project primarily targets researchers in the humanities and social sciences, but the results can be applied in other scientific fields.
Questions about responsibility, operations, and costs regarding the preservation of research data are relevant for all Swedish HEIs. The flagship project at Lund University can show how to work towards creating long-term technical systems and solutions for preserving databases.
Contact: Kristoffer Holmqvist (kristoffer.holmqvist@ub.lu.se)
Chalmers and KTH
Efficient reuse of administrative research information from project initiation to data publication
This project is an independent continuation of the Flagship pilot conducted by Chalmers and KTH in collaboration with SND (read the final report here). The goal is to reduce the administrative burden on researchers by reusing information about research projects through machine-readable data management plans that communicate with other research administrative systems. The project aims to develop a solution to create and fill out a data management plan using metadata from other systems, such as SweCris.
One of the benefits of the initiative is that researchers and research administrators can avoid having to manually enter the same information into multiple systems. This can increase incentives for researchers to create data management plans, as the process becomes simpler and more streamlined.
Contact: Urban Andersson (urban.andersson@chalmers.se)
Chalmers, GU, KTH, and the SND office
Traceable research data: Methods and recommendations for enhanced traceability and visibility of Swedish data publications
This Flagship project aims to improve the management and traceability of data publications at Swedish higher education institutions. It explores how data publications can be identified, registered, and tracked over time.
By developing methods for harvesting metadata and producing practical recommendations, the project contributes to improved traceability, visibility, and quality assurance of research data in alignment with the FAIR principles. The results will be made openly accessible in the form of current state and gap analyses, recommendations, and proposed technical solutions.
The goal of the project is to establish conditions that support national requirements for monitoring and reporting. Universities, researchers, and other stakeholders will gain support in identifying and highlighting published research data, thereby strengthening Swedish research both nationally and internationally.
Contact: Therese Tikkanen (therese.tikkanen@chalmers.se)