Digital Research Data at TU Darmstadt
Welcome to the web pages of the TU Darmstadt for dealing with digital research data!
The TUdata team, which was formed in 2018, supports all members of the university on behalf of the Executive Board in securing, archiving, publishing and re-using research data. To this end, the University and State Library, the University IT Service and Computing Centre and the Department VI – Research and Transfer work together at TUdata.
In December 2015, the university adopted guidelines on digital research data at the TU Darmstadt.
Our topics and services
Research data management , e.g. with the TU-GitLab and the Hessenbox
Retrieval and citation of research data
Creating data management plans using the TU data management organizer TUdmo
Archiving and publication of research data with TUdatalib
What are Research Data?
Research Data are the most essential resource in modern science. Scientific hypotheses and theories are formed and verified by research data. The German Research Foundation (DFG) considers their Guidelines on how to deal with Research Data from 2015 as “crucial foundation for all scientific work”. The DFG also points out the importance of research data for research and science by acknowledging that the variety of research data “resembles the variety of scientific disciplines, epistemological interests and research types.”
The Guidelines on digital research data at TU Darmstadt define research data as all digital data, “that are produced during the process or as the outcome of experiments, measurements, simulations, software developments, studies of primary sources, inquiries or surveys.” This includes everything from pictures to multi-dimensional models, audio and video recordings, texts, tables, databases and even computer programs (source code and application software). Subject or device specific raw data in various formats are also considered as research data.
To make use and understand research data, correct documentation and software is vital. Research data are often preserved in different aggregation levels and very specific digital formats that correspond to their different disciplines.
FDM in third-party funding applications
Depending on the funding organisation, there are different requirements for research data management. The costs incurred for corresponding measures, e.g. to increase reusability, can partly be claimed in the context of applications.
Subject-specific aspects
Many aspects of research data management are determined by subject-specific factors. This applies in particular to the way in which data are obtained, the object of study and the nature of the resulting data. Accordingly, the appropriate approaches and the tools that support them are also dependent on the respective discipline, as are suitable metadata standards or terminologies for describing and documenting the research data.
Recommendations for approaches and suitable tools and standards are being developed in Germany for many disciplines within the framework of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI). An overview of the active NFDI consortia can be found here:
The NFDI consortia are a good point of contact for discipline-specific research data management issues. If required, we will be happy to identify a suitable contact for you.
If you want to make your research data citable and re-usable through publication, there are specialised subject repositories for many disciplines and data types that make the research data stored there searchable on the basis of subject-specific parameters and visible to a specialist audience. You can search for suitable repositories via re3data.org