The work with getting research data management in higher education institutions certified according to CoreTrustSeal has begun. The first HEI in the SND pilot project is Karolinska Institutet (KI), and they hope to have completed their certification application soon.
The purpose with this certification is to get a validation that the research data management is sustainable throughout the research process, so that the data remain as open and reusable as possible. The certification requirements from the CoreTrustSeal organisation review factors such as responsibilities, curation, storage, access and availability, data quality, security, confidentiality, and workflows.
The KI Research Data Office manages their application
—It feels like you want to make sure that you’ve covered everything before you submit it, so it’s been very useful to look at SND's latest application for certification. Sometimes it’s hard to tell what CoreTrustSeal wants, some of their requirements are fairly fuzzy, there are a lot of things to respond to, and it’s not always easy to interpret the requirements, says Johan Lundeqvist, project manager for the KI certification application.
The application work is done by the KI Research Data Office, with support from the SND project team for this certification pilot. The KI team is composed by staff from IT, the archive, library, and Grants Office.
—As SND has already been certified and we are a part of their network, we get a good share from the SND system, for example the metadata. What we are really certifying for ourself is our local storage solution, which is brand new and has not yet been taken into use, other than in a current pilot, says Johan Lundeqvist.
Johan Lundeqvist explains that a large portion of the application work is to make visible and systematically document all of the work processes, systems, tools, and staff resources that are available in KI and SND, in regards to managing research data throughout the research process. The team has worked intensively with displaying and creating official links to support what they highlight in the application.
A pilot project with four organisations
KI is one of four organisations that take part in the SND certification pilot project. The other three are Chalmers, RISE, and Bolin Centre in Stockholm University. Jeremy Azzopardi is a Research Data Advisor and coordinator of the SND project team.
—Something that we will be working with a lot now at the beginning of the project is to figure out what we share. What does the membership in the SND network provide them with and which requirements do the HEIs have to meet locally, on their own, in order to be certified? says Jeremy Azzopardi.
He goes on to tell that another important reason for the certification is to get discussions started in the HEIs around which criteria and requirements that CoreTrustSeal contains.
The road ahead is important
—The text in the application can actually be quite short, the road to getting there is just as important. So far, we’ve seen that the technical requirements can be met. The question that have arisen have mostly been about staff resources and different types of expertise, and where to find them. The network is an advantage; for example, in the SND consortium we have the domain specialists, who are a shared resource, says Jeremy Azzopardi.
The main objective of the pilot project is that the organisations that take part in it should be certified according to CoreTrustSeal. Another purpose is to investigate which certification requirements can be met with shared solutions from SND, and to draw up a checklist for how to fill out the shared responses in an application.