KAFFE

The KAFFE project – with KAFFE being an acronym for “kartläggning av förmågor inom forskningens e-infrastruktursystem”; mapping capabilities in the research e-infrastructure system – concluded at the end of 2025, and as of January 2026, the continued work is carried out as part of SND’s regular activities.

KAFFE 2026

The day-to-day work with KAFFE is led by Eva Stensköld, Director of SND, and undertaken by a working group made up of the SND staff who were part of the project group, with support from additional colleagues for analysis and coding of the interviews from the project. Initially, the main focus is on finalizing and publishing reports and recommendations, and on compiling material so that it can be made available, preserved, and used in further studies. The results will be presented in one or more webinars. As further researcher interviews are being conducted in several parts of the SND Network, support and guidance will be offered to those carrying out and analysing interviews at higher education institutions.

What is happening now?

Based on the KAFFE interview findings, the interview guide and associated material, as well as the capability map and descriptions, will be updated to ensure consistency in the use of capabilities and descriptions in future interviews and presentations. This done to create cohesiveness in the communication within the KAFFE work, in future studies, and external communication.

In addition to the joint report, parts of the material will also be produced as more detailed sub-reports. At present, these include:

  • Terminological friction – areas where different definitions and uses of terms create friction.
  • Capability descriptions and visualizations – including business capability maps. The intention is to create maps that can be adapted as needed for local needs, in order to make them as reusable as possible.
  • Report from the researcher interviews – a more extensive account of the methodology, guides, results and analyses.
  • Material in English: relevant parts of the project reports, as well as all material intended for reuse.

Finalized material will be made available on an ongoing basis, and information about the work will be updated as it progresses.

What has been completed

The project report and recommendations from the results have been completed and published on Zenodo: Project report and recommendations from the KAFFE project (in Swedish). They were presented at a webinar on 2 September. 

The project report provides an overview of the work carried out in the KAFFE project, how its different parts are connected, and the picture it presents of researchers’ needs in relation to the existing e-infrastructure landscape. The report draws on the interview material to bring together voices and experiences from different career stages and disciplines, with the aim of identifying recurring themes and linking them to findings from the other project tracks. Researchers’ perspectives are compared with the views expressed by decision-makers in the guidelines and reports reviewed during the project. This highlights how different perspectives can create gaps between researchers’ needs and decision-makers’ expectations. The project report also captures some of the linguistic ambiguities that exist both among decision-makers and in relation to researchers, and that may contribute to uncertainty between needs and expectations, practice and policy. Finally, the report presents an updated capability map with revised descriptions of key capabilities related to research data management. 

The recommendations are presented separately in the project report, as well as on the Recommendations from the KAFFE project webpage, and are addressed to actors at several levels in the e-infrastructure landscape. They are rooted in researchers’ perspectives and needs regarding research data management throughout the phases of research that circle around research data – from planning to active data collection and processing, to making data available and ensuring long-term preservation – each of which places different demands on responsibilities, infrastructure, and support. The recommendations are central to reducing the gap between policy and practice, strengthening national coordination, and ensuring that the development of e-infrastructure is based on the actual needs of research and researchers.

The interview material has been reviewed and documented to ensure that the analyses have been carried out consistently and that the transcripts are accurate. They were then compiled, anonymized, packaged, and published as a dataset on Researchdata.se: Interviews with doctoral students and researchers about research data management and needs of e-infrastructure.

Working group

  • Eva Stensköld
  • Gustav Nilsonne
  • Karin Westin Tikkanen
  • Lisa Isaksson
  • Madeleine Dutoit
  • Stefan Ekman

The following people are also involved in the work on the interview material:

  • Arin Savran
  • Elin Hallman
  • Signe Schjøtt

Results and outputs

As the work is still ongoing, this section will be expanded as material becomes available. The headings below therefore indicate what is currently planned or in progress.

Dataset

  • The KAFFE interviews: Interviews with doctoral students and researchers about research data management and needs of e-infrastructure. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5878/tsxe-f281 

Articles

Presentations

Reports and visualizations

Guides and support for researcher interviews: An updated interview guide, questionnaire, and analysis guide – material produced by the project that can be reused in further studies.

Other: Project plan

Would you like to contact us?

Contact: Eva Stensköld, eva.stenskold@snd.se

Contact address to the working group: kaffe@snd.se