Prior to creating a collection, the research administrator checks the financial, legal, and organisational aspects, decides on the project identifier that will link the collection to a project (e.g., a BASS project number, another number that uniquely identifies the project in the OU, or a keyword that identifies the project), and ensures that the proper manager is made responsible for the collection.

A researcher is only eligible to be a collection manager if they are employed by the Radboud university or Radboudumc and has the corresponding credentials. Within these restrictions, it is up to the research institute to decide who is eligible to become collection manager. Some research institutes require that (at least one of) the collection manager(s) is a group leader or senior researcher to guarantee longer availability of the collection manager - since PhD students or postdocs tend to leave the university within a couple of years.

Collections can be removed in the following situations:

1. The preservation period of the collection has expired. To ensure long-term compliance with the GDPR and to save costs, the RDR might remove data from published or archived collections after the retention period has expired. The research administrator has no active role in this.
2. The collection has been published or archived, but should not have been. For example, in the extreme case of a data-leak. These collections need to be retracted. This can only be done by support adminstrators (i.e. the Digital Competence Centre). The research administrator has the responsibility to report such collections in their OU to the Digital Competence Centre (DCC). They must work in cooperation with the DCC and the collection manager(s) in order to successfully retract the collection and to find a suitable alternative archiving location for the content.
3. The collection has not yet been published or archived but is no longer needed. For example, if a mistake was made at creation (e.g. a wrong collection identifier or collection type) or if the researcher who requested the collection no longer needs it. The research administrator has the responsibility to delete unpublished or unarchived collections in their OU if they are no longer needed. This needs to be done to keep the OU and by extension the repository clean and to save storage costs (and the environment).

The research administrator is responsible for deciding if a new version of a published or archived collection is needed. If a researcher needs to edit or fix an error in a published or archived collection, the research administrator can create a new version. The RDR is an archive and therefore supports archiving permanent datasets, thus versioning is only a solution in the exceptional case that a mistake has been made. Research administrators need to weigh organisational, financial (storage costs), environmental, and FAIR aspects in their decision to create a new version.

If the access level (and thus licence) needs to be changed, the Digital Competence Centre has a protocol to see whether a new version can be used or if the collection needs to be retracted. In general, if no new licence demands/features are needed and the new access level is more open, a new version will be made.

The research administrator is responsible for ensuring that all collections in the OU have a manager that can be reached, including collections that are archived/published. Each collection needs (at least) one manager who takes on the responsibilities of the collection as described in the Repository Policy. This means that if a collection manager leaves the university or loses eligibility to be a manager in another way, the research administrator must assign a new manager (e.g., another group leader, the director of the research institute, or the data steward). To support the research administrator in this task, the RDR sends periodical email notifications to the research administrator with a list of collections without a manager. Also, after login, research administrators will see a warning button next to their profile name stating that "There are collections without managers". This button leads to an overview page with all collections without managers.

Collections that have not been edited for over 1 year and have still not been published or archived are called dormant collections. These collections are undesirable, since the goal of the RDR is to actually archive or publish collections. If the collection manager never archives, publishes, or closes a collection, these goals cannot be achieved. How the research administrator handles these dormant collections is up to them and their institute. For example, by initially reminding the managers of their collection and by offering support. To support the research administrator in this task, the RDR sends periodical email notifications to collection managers when one or more of their collections is/are dormant. Research administrators can also download the OU metrics to find which collections in their OU are dormant (see manuals). Know that collection managers have already received the email notification once their collection is marked as 'dormant' in the metrics overview.

The research administrator is responsible for tracking all access requests of restricted access collections within their OU and is the first point of contact to provide support regarding the Data Use Agreement (DUA). Access to restricted access collections must be granted only when a Data Use Agreement has been signed by both the data provider and the data user. Access without a singed DUA is often a data breach! A researcher might need help with the decision whether or not access can be granted or with the setting up and signing of the DUA. The research administrator is responsible for either helping managers or for directing them to the right person who can help them. In most cases the data steward of the institute and/or the legal department need to be involved in this process. Note that the collection manager(s) remain(s) responsible for granting access in line with any national or international laws and regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), ethical guidelines such as the Netherlands Code of Conduct for Research Integrity, publisher embargoes, and informed consent forms; the research administrator does not take on this responsibility. So if unauthorised access is granted, the manager who granted access remains responsible. The research administrator is there to support. To support the research administrator in this task, the RDR CC's the research administrator in the email when a request is made.

Keeping track of usage of the RDR within the research administrator's OU can help to develop/improve the research institute’s Research Data Management policy. To do this, a research administrator can download a csv or excel file containing the metadata and metrics of all collections of their OU. This task could also be done by a data steward of that research institute.See the manuals below for more details.

The RDR can be incorporated within the research institute’s RDM policy. This policy helps to direct researchers on what RDM solution (for example “werkgroepmappen”, SURFDrive, discipline-specific repositories, etc.) to use in a specific occasion. Please note that the RDR has been designed as a repository for research data.

• Data generated by students as part of a research internship do not belong in the RDR unless they are of high scientific value and serve as the foundation of a scientific report (other than the student's thesis).
• In line with this policy, the research institute may decide that the RDR is used to publicly share datasets (i.e., to only use the DSCs), to internally archive datasets (i.e., to only use DACs, RDCs, or both), or that both functionalities of the RDR may be used (i.e., to use DACs and/or RDCs as well as DSCs).
• The research institute’s policy should also specify where privacy sensitive data that are not research data (i.e., administrative data), such as the pseudonymization key and filled-out informed consent forms, should be stored. It is highly recommended not to store these files in an RDR collection since they are not research data and may have a very different preservation period than the research data of a collection.

The institute’s policy on RDR usage should specify who is eligible to become an OU member. Furthermore, it should specify who is eligible as collection manager in an OU. In all cases an eligible manager should be employed by the RU/Radboudumc and by the relevant OU. It is recommended not to initiate a collection with only PhD students or postdocs as collection managers, since they tend to leave the university after only a couple of years, leaving the research administrator with the task to transfer collection responsibility to another researcher.

Furthermore, the policy should specify whether OU members can be “Metadata Viewers” (see User managent above). The advantage of allowing researchers to become metadata viewers is that it creates transparency within an OU on who is working on what and may therefore promote collaborations. However, in the case of extremely sensitive research it may be preferable not to allow researchers to become metadata viewers.

The research institute should develop a procedure that allows researchers to request a collection. This can be as simple as providing an email address of the research administrator to the researcher. Another option would be that researchers can fill out a form on the research institute’s intranet to request a collection. The advantage of this method is that via a form additional information can be requested from the researcher that is needed to initiate a collection (i.e., project identifier, title, type of collection, manager, collection quota, preservation time, etc.).

The research institute must decide how to implement the project identifier. This could be a keyword that helps researchers to identify their collection based on the collection identifier or a (financial or organisational) project number assigned to a research project by the administration of the institute. In the first example the researcher gets to choose the project identifier, and therefore must provide that information to the research administrator upon requesting a collection.

Some researchers may request and use a collection, but leave it in the “editable” state without ever archiving or publishing it. This is not desirable and the research institute may implement a policy to keep track of these “dormant” collections and encourage researchers to archive or publish their data collections.

The research institute’s policy should make decisions about open access data sharing. Under what circumstances can the researcher request an embargo? What recommendations are made to researchers on when to choose a Restricted Access DSC? Take into account that Radboud university’s policy dictates to share research data as open as possible.