The RDR is an institutional digital repository that supports researchers of Radboud University and the Radboudumc in the long-term archiving (preservation) and FAIR publication of their research data, in compliance with Radboud University's Research Data Management (RDM) policy.

The mission of the RDR is to preserve Radboud University's research data for the long-term and to make these data accessible according to the FAIR principles in order to:

1. Enhance the impact of research executed at Radboud University by supporting reuse of research data within and outside of Radboud  University;
2. Support research quality and integrity by facilitating the documentation of the research process.

With these objectives, the RDR contributes to the mission of Radboud University: “to contribute to a free and healthy world with equal opportunities for all and to make a significant impact on a regional and an international level.”

The primary focus of the RDR is digital research data from all disciplines.

By research data, we mean all data, digital and non-digital, that was generated or reused during the research process and used to form scientific conclusions. This encompasses information that is used to form and test hypotheses, as well as information upon which conclusions are based. This definition of research data includes observational, experimental, simulated, derived, and compiled data. It also includes software generated during the research process or the workflow  describing the research process. Data generated by students as part of an internship do not belong in the RDR, unless they are of scientific value and serve as the foundation of a scientific report (other than the  student's thesis). Data that do not fall within this scope (i.e. that  are not research data from Radboud University or Radboudumc researchers) are not accepted in the RDR. Data collection creation, publication, and archiving must always be in compliance with the RDR Repository Policy, and in particular the Content and Submission Policies.

The RDR supports researchers of Radboud University to adhere to the FAIR principles and Radboud University's research data management (RDM)  policy.

The RDR supports researchers of Radboud University and the Radboudumc to adhere to the FAIR principles and Radboud University's Research Data Management (RDM) policy. This Policy requires researchers to:

1. Archive research data underlying a scientific publication for a minimum of 10 years;
2. Publish said research data “as open as possible, as closed as necessary”;
3. Publish said research data in compliance with the F(indable) and A(ccessible) principles.

The RDR offers the following features in line with this policy:

1. The RDR has a mission to preserve research data of Radboud University and Radboudumc researchers for the long-term. This means that the repository offers more than safe, backed-up storage: it also has procedures in place to ensure continued accessibility and understandability of archived data (see the section  below).
2. The RDR offers various access levels (see our help page) to allow researchers to publish as open as the sensitivity of the data allows.
3. The RDR makes data findable by assigning a persistent identifier (specifically a Digital Object Identifier; DOI) to each collection. Both externally shared collections (Data Sharing Collections; DSCs) and internally archived collections (Data Acquisition Collections; DACs, and Research Documentation Collections; RDCs) receive a DOI.
4. It makes data findable by providing rich metadata for each collection. These are according to the universally accepted DublinCore, DataCite, and schema.org  standards and include the DOI, title, author, date, descriptive notes, applicable access restrictions and descriptions of the context, content, and properties of the data (e.g. the audience, keywords, linked datasets, publications, analysis tools and pre-registrations).
5. It offers various options for access management to data and metadata. This is achieved by the various roles with different rights researchers can have in a collection (collection manager, contributor, or viewer). Researchers can manage access to their published collections (DSCs) by selecting a proper access level and licence or Data Use Agreement.
6. It increases adherence to the FAIR principles by a FAIR review process: all public data collections are reviewed by FAIR reviewers prior to publication. During this review, an RDM expert of the university advises on topics such as documentation, accessibility, sustainability, and personal data.

More information can be found in the sections on Findability and Access Management and Privacy Concerns.

The RDR accommodates the following roles for administrative and support responsibilities.

A support administrator is a member of the University's Digital Competence Centre and is responsible for providing user support for all users (RU and non-RU) of the RDR. To do that, they have access to data and metadata of all collections in the RDR and to all user profiles in the RDR. They will only access collections if there is a valid reason to do so, mindful of GDPR compliance and the sensitivity of the data. All support administrators are expected to maintain confidentiality when processing data, in particular identifiable data.

A research administrator is a person who has administrative responsibility for one of the repository's Organisational Units (OUs). Research administrators must be employed by Radboud University. Data collections can only be initiated by a research administrator. The research administrator checks the financial and legal aspects before initiating a collection and ensures that the data collection is properly set up with a collection manager, the researcher responsible for managing the content. A researcher is only eligible to be a collection manager if they are employed by Radboud University and in possession of the corresponding credentials. The research administrator ensures that a data collection always has an up-to-date manager. This means that if a collection manager leaves the University or loses  eligibility to be a manager in another way, the research administrator has to assign a new manager. Finally, the research administrator is responsible for access to all data collections in the corresponding OU. This is required for scientific integrity, so security checks regarding fraud, plagiarism and data construction can take place if needed. They will only access collections if there is a valid reason to do so, observing GDPR compliance and the sensitivity of the data. All research administrators are expected to maintain confidentiality when processing data, in particular identifiable data. To find out more about the responsibilities of research administrators, see our protocol for research administrators.

A FAIR reviewer is responsible for conducting a FAIR  review of DSCs prior to their publication. They are RDM experts of the university library's Digital Competence Centre and responsible for promoting adherence to the FAIR principles. They help to prevent data breaches by checking at random whether the DSC contains personal data that should not be publicly shared. Note that this responsibility is supportive in nature; the responsibility for compliance with legal and ethical aspects regarding data sharing, and the data and metadata content of a published or archived data collection lies with the collection manager(s).

Once the data collection has been published or archived, the system administrator  – one or more developers employed by Radboud University's ICT Service Centre (ISC) – is responsible for long-term data availability. To accomplish this, the system administrator requires access to all collections in the RDR. Collections will only be accessed if necessary to fulfil the system administrator's task and the system administrator is accountable for keeping up confidentiality when accessing data,  personal data in particular.

The RDR offers various functionalities to improve findability of data collections.

Each collection (independent of the collection type) is identified by a unique, persistent identifier (DOI), which is findable using search engines like Google. The DOI also makes datasets citable. To improve exposure of data collections in the RDR, metadata are automatically exported to the RIS, the Current Research Information System (CRIS) of Radboud University. This makes collection metadata accessible in the Radboud Repository and in the Netherlands Research Portal.

The RDR allows for various versions of each data collection. These versions can be found under the same DOI.

Findability is further enhanced by the use of extensive metadata fields. Some of the metadata fields are obligatory (title, authors, preservation time, keywords, target audience, and DUA). The publication date, data size, version number, manifest, and DOI are automatically added as metadata. Researchers can also add references to related scientific publications, datasets, pre-registrations and analysis tools.  In the case of published data collections (DSCs), metadata are visible  to everyone, irrespective of restricted access conditions. Making  metadata publicly available is optional for the archived internal collections (DACs and RDCs).

Metadata in the RDR follow the DataCite, Dublin Core, and schema.org metadata schemas. These metadata standards are broadly accepted and help to make data findable for both humans and machines. Metadata of published DSCs and of archived DACs and RDCs with public metadata are shared under a CC0 1.0 Universal licence. This includes the automatically generated ABOUT.txt, LICENSE.txt, and MANIFEST.txt files and files labelled as documentation files.

Deposition of data in the RDR is in compliance with national and international standards and legislation regarding scientific integrity and privacy law (General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Dutch code for Scientific Integrity). Extensive online help and support from the Digital Competence Centre is provided to help train  researchers with the policy and guidelines surrounding scientific integrity and data management. Researchers also receive help on how to anonymise and/or pseudonymise data before sharing.

The RDR offers extensive access management to collections through different roles researchers can have in a collection (collection manager, contributor or viewer). Access to all collections in an OU is automatically granted to research administrators of that OU, support administrators, and the RDR system administrator(s). This is required for scientific integrity purposes and for offering (technical) support. Researchers can regulate access to publicly shared collections by selecting an appropriate access level and licence and/or placing an embargo on a collection. The RDR offers several broadly acknowledged open access licences for research data and code. For potentially identifiable data, the RDR offers a university-specific DUA based on principles of Open access and the relevant European legislation (GDPR) as well as the Dutch code for scientific integrity. The RDR also offers two DUAs, namely RU-RA-DUA-2.1 and RUMC-RA-DUA-1.0 for sharing research data under restricted access conditions. The conditions specified in these DUAs have been agreed upon by the Radboud University and Radboudumc legal departments respectively. Licences and DUAs in the RDR can be interpreted by both humans and machines.

If a user is not compliant with the licence or DUA of a published  collection the RDR aims to notify the collection manager and to suspend the user from further use of the data collection. In the event of data leakage (unauthorised access to personal data), Radboud University's procedure for data breaches will be followed.

To ensure data integrity, the RDR performs several technical, automated processes focused on version control and event tracking.

Firstly, the RDR tracks audit trails. The system logs all interactions of users with the data and metadata. The audit trail database is backed up daily. Each event that is logged contains information about 1) the user that initiated the interaction, 2) the timestamp, 3) the context or action (e.g. open, create, delete, update),  and 4) the target object (e.g. data file, metadata attribute) of the action. All events are visible to the collection managers and contributors in the history tab on the web-based portal.

For all data files in the RDR, a SHA256 checksum is calculated and stored as attribute. Each data file is replicated to a second, off-site location and the success of the replication is confirmed by comparing the checksum on both sides. If the file is modified by a collection manager or contributor, the checksum is updated, and the data is replicated again. The list of checksums of all files in a collection can be downloaded from the web portal. This enables users to check data  integrity after data transfer to or from an external system. The storage system for the data files performs regular data integrity checks.

As soon as a collection is published or archived by the collection manager, the collection becomes read-only, and the persistent identifier (DOI) pointing to that collection becomes active. A published or archived collection can be updated after creating a new version; a copy of the dataset is created, and the initial version remains read-only.

In the case of removed or retracted data collections (see “data retraction and removal” in introduction to the RDR), the audit trail and metadata are retained.

To guarantee the long-term accessibility of data files, the repository may perform data migrations, by moving data from one format to another, for example. In this case, the original data are always kept in a previous version of the data collection.

The RDR has several features to ensure data and metadata quality.

Firstly, some metadata fields are obligatory. This ensures that important dataset descriptors (e.g. title, authors, preservation time, keywords, target audience, and DUA) are always provided.

Help is provided to researchers to compile the data collection through online help pages; the pages on data documentation and metadata; and preferred formats, and a helpdesk.

Data and metadata quality is also promoted through the implementation of review steps before a collection can be archived or published. These review steps allow for data collections to be thoroughly checked by collaborators before they are archived or published. In the case of DSCs, a mandatory FAIR review step is included, allowing FAIR reviewers to review whether the collection meets Radboud Data Repository's publication standards.

The RDR is classified as a highest security-grade data system suitable for preserving large volume, privacy sensitive (i.e. human) research data.

A strict security policy at the Information and Library Service (ILS) department is in place to ensure that valuable digital data in the RDR remain available (availability), do not become corrupted (integrity), and do not fall into the wrong hands (confidentiality).

Both data and metadata are stored on enterprise-grade storage systems. The database for metadata is backed up twice a day. Furthermore, two copies of the data are maintained by the system in different geographical locations to protect against data loss in case of a natural disaster.