With our "Research Data Management" service, we offer consulting on sustainable data management. We recommend the user appropriate metadata standards, data annotation and dissemination mechanisms, such that research data are made FAIR ("Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable").

Research Data Management, as understood nowadays, comprises more than just saving data on secure data storage facilities. Data has to be enriched with descriptive metadata, and there has to be a mechanism for assigning a globally unique, persistent identifier (e.g. DOI) to each data product.

This reasoning reflects in the FAIR principles ("Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable"), which have been established as fundamental guidelines for modern Research Data Management in the last few years. These concepts, developed in the context of Open Data and Open Science, imply a dissemination of metadata and the assignment of identifiers, as already touched on above. The data thus become easily findable and reusable for other researchers.

The LRZ offer "Research Data Management" helps scientists to comply with the FAIR principles in their data management. At this point of time, we offer consulting with respect to data publication, selection of metadata standards, and the like.

Please contact us via servicedesk.lrz.de. We will then consult you on concepts and solutions for your specific use case, also taking into account services of the Munich University Libraries and establishing the relevant contacts.

The LRZ plans to establish a system which holds metadata and mints DOIs e.g. for large, hardly movable data sets on LRZ storage systems. This system hosts "Landing Pages", i.e. web pages with information on the data products and access possibilities, and offers APIs such that search engines can harvest the metadata. It will be tested with pilot users; please direct requests regarding this system to the servicedesk (servicedesk.lrz.de) as well.

Scope of services

The LRZ Research Data Management Service comprises:

• Consulting on a sustainable Research Data Management strategy
• Consulting on data publication, and on assignment of persistent identifiers such as DOIs (Digital Object Identifiers)
• Consulting on the FAIR principles and their practical meaning
• Technical solutions for a limited number of pilot users – please send us requests via the servicedesk when interested

A typical consulting session will take a few hours (1-5h).

In cases which need more discussion and in which both client and LRZ are interested, a collaboration with LRZ (e.g. a joint research project) may be set up.

Solutions and collaborations are delivered on a best-effort basis.

 The Service is free of charge.