The Research Services department of the Library has recently expanded to four teams, and is appointing some new heads. I have added short descriptions of core tasks for each team
Yan Wang has been appointed Head of Research Data and Software. This team has responsibility for
Madeleine de Smaele is the Interim Director of 4TU.ResearchData. (We are currently in the recruitment process for a full-time Director) This team has responsibility for the
Authors: Connie Clare, Ashley Cryan, Egbert Gramsbergen, Jan van der Heul, Paula Martinez Lavanchy, Eric Rumondor, Madeleine de Smaele, Marta Teperek, Yan Wang, Eirini Zormpa*
* with contributions of all team members of the Research Data Services team at TU Delft Library
The first quarter of each year is the time to reflect on the key achievements of the past year. Each service department within the TU Delft Library is encouraged to make such a reflection, and in particular, think about achievements especially relevant to each faculty at TU Delft. This list is then used as input for discussion points with the faculty leaders.
Below you can find the key achievements of the Research Data Services team in 2020, grouped by TU Delft faculties.
Highlights which apply to all faculties
4TU.ResearchData
4TU.ResearchData has been upgraded to a new repository platform, with new sought-after functionalities: restricted access, integration with GitHub for software publishing, improved statistics, which have been highlighted in a short video animation. 4TU.ResearchData has also celebrated its 10th year anniversary, which attracted ~150 online attendees from all over the world.
In addition, there was a soft-launch of the 4TU.ResearchData Community, which has since welcomed more than 50 online members. Community programming includes one-to-one engagement, monthly working group meetings, blogs, and a monthly newsletter. Three community-led working groups have been established by data stewards from TUD, TU/e and UT: FAIR and Reproducible code (led by Nicolas Dintzner); Privacy and GDPR (lead by Santosh Ilamparuthi); and, Engagement and Education (led by Yan Wang) .
Policy development
All PhD candidates who started on/after 1 January 2020 will have their Data Management Plans (DMPs) as part of the go/no-go.
TU Delft has also revised the data management plan template to make creation of DMPs more cost-efficient for researchers. TU Delft template has been approved by NWO which means that researchers can use the very same template to comply with TU Delft’s as well as NWO’s requirements. In 2021, the DMP tool will be further integrated with other university systems: data storage request system and privacy register.
The TU Delft Research Software Policy and Guidelines have been approved by the Cvb on the 16 February 2021. The policy aims at facilitating the workflow for publishing research software and recognizing the contribution of researchers to open source software projects. The communication and implementation of the TU Delft Research Software policy and guidelines will start in April 2021. In order to allow researchers to easily publish and get credit for their research software and to provide management information and statistics on the number of software projects published by TU Delft researchers, 4TU.ResearchData will be integrated with GitLab in 2021.
In 2020, TU Delft library has closely worked with TU Delft graduate school to embed research data management in the Doctoral Education programme. We are proud to say that since 2020, Research Data Management is part of the Research Skills in the programme. TU Delft Library in collaboration with the data stewards have created the “Research Data Management 101” course for PhD candidates at TU Delft. The roll out of the course started in October 2021 and it is part of the Graduate School Doctoral Education programme.
Furthermore, TU Delft library together with the data stewards and DCC provide on a regular basis the “Software Carpentry workshops”. These workshops are live coding sessions that cover the core basic skills needed to work reproducibly with code. During 2019 – 2020, two hundred students and researchers have joined the workshops (led by Paula Martinez Lavanchy and Esther Plomp). The workshops are part of the Graduate School Doctoral Education programme. Data Stewards from all the Faculties have been essential in establishing and running the Software and Data Carpentry workshops. Six data stewards are now certified instructors from The Carpentries.
In 2021, the Research Data Services will continue the implementation of the Vision for Research Data & Software management training at TU Delft, and in particular, we are planning to create and to roll out a personal data & GDPR course for PhD candidates and start organising Code Refinery workshops, which will focus on FAIR software and working reproducibly with code.
Faculty-specific highlights
The highlights below are specific to each faculty and are about the achievements which happened thanks to a collaboration with TU Delft Library.
Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment
Together with the Library and the IDE faculty, took the lead in establishing the Digital Humanities community at TU Delft
Was awarded dedicated support (competitive basis) of the Digital Competence Center at TU Delft (6-month dedicated support by Data Manager and Research Software Engineer) to work on a project focused on identifying challenges and opportunities for the implementation of FAIR principles within research outputs generated by the Delft Digital Humanities and Historical GIS communities
Collaborated with staff members of the Digital Competence Center to host a 15-person online workshop, “Python Essentials for GIS Learners”, to help researchers build basic skills to work (explore, analyse, visualise and version control) programmatically with geospatial data through social coding
Organized two “data carpentry for social sciences” workshops, where 14 (from 38) researchers from ABE faculty joined. The faculty graduate school (Inge Meulenberg, the Executive Secretary of the faculty Graduate School) has shown interest in that the library offers this workshop more often. TU Delft Library is creating an alliance with Leiden university to offer “data carpentry for social sciences” workshops on a regular basis and in a sustainable manner, hoping that it helps to cover the demand from ABE
Faculty of Industrial Design
Together with the Library and the ABE faculty, took the lead in establishing the Digital Humanities community at TU Delft
The faculty data steward took the leading role in the implementation, onboarding and oversight of data managers at TU Delft. Not only the Faculty has already two dedicated data managers at departmental level, but in addition, the faculty data steward acted as daily supervisor of data managers at the central, university level
The faculty played a leading role in emphasising the importance of management information for proper recognition of good data management practices
Was awarded dedicated support (competitive basis) of the Digital Competence Center at TU Delft (6-month dedicated support by Data Manager and Research Software Engineer) to work on two projects focused on developing a Graphical User Interface for an automated risk-mitigation tool for construction projects, and scoping and executing efficient and FAIR solutions for handling, storage and sharing of large datasets of rainfall simulations across the continent of Africa
Has the most Data Management Plans created in 2020
Showed high interest from researchers to join the Software Carpentry workshops (37 from 201 participants, in third place after 3mE and applied science)
Published the most datasets of all TU Delft faculties (27% of data publications are from CEG)
Faculty of Electronic Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
In collaboration with the 4TU.ResearchData, the data steward took the lead in establishing best practices for handling restricted data (data access committee) and made substantial contributions to the Privacy and GDPR working group of the data stewards within the 4TU.Federation. This worked has been showcased on the 4TU.ResearchData community platform: Development of a Data Access Committee
The data steward made significant contributions to the dedicated national course on data privacy (in collaboration with 4TU.ResearchData and RDNL, and led by the Data Protection Officer of the EUR)
The data steward has provided substantive feedback to the revised version of the data management plan template at TU Delft
Faculty of Applied Sciences
In collaboration with the Library, the faculty data steward took a leading role in the organisation of Carpentry Workshops at TU Delft
Was awarded dedicated support (competitive basis) of the Digital Competence Center at TU Delft (6-month dedicated support by Data Manager and Research Software Engineer) to work on increasing the visibility of the software package for an in-house electronic structure machine learning code, and developing a fast, interactive visualisation and analysis tool for multidimensional datasets that is embedded inside a Jupyter Notebook, with a modular plug-in support for generic input formats and metadata
For the second year in a row (2019-2020), two of the faculty data champions, Raúl Ortiz-Merino and Marcel van der Broek, in collaboration with the Library, have organised a Genomic Data Carpentry workshop
Anton Akhmerov was part of the working group that drafted the TU Delft Research Software Policy and guidelines. He was one of the initiators of this work and his view has been crucial to incorporate the researchers perspective
Together with the Library and the ICT, the data steward took a leading role in the roll out of electronic lab notebooks at TU Delft.
Faculty of Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering
Exemplary faculty with regards to stimulating faculty engagement with the Open Science Programme (particularly through the outreach conducted by the data steward)
Exemplary approach to training PhD candidates on completing a DMP, with an evaluation/check-in meeting happening several months after the initial DMP drafting
The data steward made a significant contribution to the programme committee of the Openness and Commercialisation conference in December 2020
The data steward facilitated the Coding Assistant & Research Software Engineer Pilot in collaboration with the library
High interest from researchers to join the Software Carpentry workshops (44 from 201 participants, most interest from the entire TU Delft)
The data sharing story by Tom Dijkhuis and Max Ligtenberg was highlighted on the 4TU.ResearchData community platform: Making OperationAIR Data FAIR
Together with AE, the faculty which published 2nd most datasets (13% of all datasets published at TUD)
The data steward has provided substantive feedback to the revised version of the data management plan template at TU Delft
Together with the Library and the ICT, the data steward took a leading role in the roll out of electronic lab notebooks at TU Delft.
Faculty of Aerospace Engineering
Significant contribution from the data steward in engaging researchers in the Open Science community / Data champions. The number of data champions has been doubled during 2020.
Together with 3mE, the faculty which published 2nd most datasets (13% of all datasets published at TUD)
The faculty data steward worked with the TU Delft Research Data Services team to initiative a collaboration between 4TU.ResearchData and AIAA Aeroelastic Community
The faculty data steward provided substantive feedback on the data management policy for PhD candidates at TU Delft
The Research Data and Software (RDS) team at the TU Delft Library has been undergoing an extensive grow during the last half an year. With the last new team member starting in mid-January 2024, we are very proud to present the complete team organization. For more information on the Research Services department at TU Delft Library, please visit this blog.
Research Data Management & Digital Skills Training
The training team is led by the coordinator and consists of 4 trainers, 1 educational advisor and 1 training assistant.
They coordinate, organise and run training for PhD candidates and researchers (and MSc students in some cases)
They collaborate with stakeholders from library, TU Delft and external on new training development and integration.
Data Stewardship
RDS provides the coordination of the TU Delft Data Stewardship. The Data Stewardship coordinator and the library Data Steward are in the Data Stewards team together with all faculty Data Stewards.
The coordination is twofold: coordination within the Data Stewards team and coordination with all relevant university service teams.
The Library Data Steward facilitates on all innovation projects within the Data Stewards team, and also provides the functional management of related applications (DMPonline, ELNs).
Digital Competence Centre
The RDS team is part of the TU Delft Digital Competence Centre (DCC) in collaboration with ICT innovation. Four data managers from RDS work are members of the DCC team and provide hands-on support on open and FAIR data management to researchers. The daily operation of the DCC team falls under the coordination of DCC coordinator from ICT innovation.
Innovation
The RDS team runs innovation projects which aims to pilot new services/applications, explore solutions to emerging issues or address future directions in the domain of research data and software management. Three current projects are supported by the TU Delft Open Science program:
iRODS pilot (collaboration with ICT innovation)
Guidelines for research data and software management in various research fields
Research data and software peer review (collaboration with TU Delft OPEN Publishing)
However the lack of sustainable Data Steward capacity, either in terms of funding or competent personnel, seems to be a common challenge for almost all institutions, regardless of how well the Data Stewardship is established there. There have been several initiatives at both strategic and operational levels with the purpose of recognizing and rewarding Data Stewardship or different types of research contributions, e.g. the position paper ‘Room for everyone’s talent’ in the Netherlands, the EOSC/RAD open calls and so on. Nevertheless, these initiatives either need to be operationalized or could only provide a project-based boost. The community and institutions still seek a more systematic approach to establish Data Stewardship as a profession in the academic system.
The Recipe
One brilliant idea from the RDM team at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden may serve as a pragmatic recipe for this demand:
Training doctoral students to work formally as Data Stewards
during the course of their PhD with extra paid time.
Immediate benefits
Many doctoral students already undertake informal work that mirrors that of Data Stewards, and are embedded in the day-to-day research data management of the projects they are involved in. As current RDM support staff at many universities can also attest to, doctoral students are often enthusiastic workshop participants, and more than occasionally need more RDM-specific support than their supervisory team can provide. Involving them in a more proactive role brings immediate benefits to the Data Stewardship ecosystem.
Voluntary but rewarded
The recipe in the works at KTH would give doctoral students professional skills development in RDM and data stewardship and more formal recognition for work that many of them already do. The proposed idea will be voluntary but rewarded, meaning:
Doctoral students are free to choose to join this programme, and be credited with the prolongation of their contracts for the time spent.
They would attend compulsory training that touches on RDM, open science, and data stewardship, which would ideally be credited as part of their course load.
They would be part of a university-wide RDM network that supports each other and works together on improving awareness in research communities.
A larger pool of Data Stewards
Although doctoral students are not often permanent additions to research teams, the recipe could allow for a larger pool of data stewards at a HEI (Higher Education Institution) than otherwise allowed, if relying on central or institutional administration to allocate funds for data stewards. We see that in many research areas, there is a growing need for more hands-on RDM support services that are closely connected with research teams. Doctoral students in Sweden are allowed to undertake at least 20% of institutional administrative or teaching activities over the course of four years of full-time employment. By including data stewardship as one of these activities, HEIs might be able to better meet the needs of data-driven research areas in providing RDM support.
Upskilling researchers and competency building
This recipe also addresses one of the common challenges faced by RDM support staff in building competencies and upskilling researchers in RDM. Training doctoral students as data stewards embeds RDM training in research communities, educates future researchers in RDM, and gets them working operatively with RDM early on. This RDM support that is embedded in research teams addresses some of the challenges described in Professionalizing Data Stewardship in the Netherlands, by working with established, or at least developing, relationships. This is similar to Aalto University’s Data Agents, who are typically postdoctoral researchers or staff scientists and work 10 – 50% as data agents.
Long term benefits
This recipe further offers a few solutions to some of the prevailing challenges facing academic data stewardship and the precarity of research careers more generally. Some of the above-mentioned immediate benefits also have a positive impact in the long term.
Skills transfer, insightful innovation, and cultural change
The embedded RDM training and competency building can be an effective way of improving things like FAIR awareness and promoting open science practices. More practically, it trains doctoral students in optimizing RDM workflows and integrating RDM into their research practices. This, in turn, will have positive benefits when they reach the point in their careers that they are actively involved in training and supervising future researchers by transferring their skills and best practices. The combination of working as a researcher and data steward would lead to an insightful and critical view on discipline-specific RDM challenges and practices. New innovations in RDM and open science could be built based on that. The embedded role also addresses researchers’ responsibilities in RDM for early career academics. By facilitating and promoting training in RDM practices early on, it gives formalized support to bottom-up initiatives promoting improved RDM practices among researchers. The new generation of academics will embrace the culture of open science.
Alternative academic career path
Finally, it can be an important step in working towards diversifying career paths in academia and modernizing the academic system of recognition and rewards. With formalized roles, doctoral student data stewards can more easily use the skills achieved through the programme on their CVs. By creating and supporting this role in doctoral training, universities address the importance of data stewardship and open science practices. This helps to formally establish professional roles in academia that directly contribute to science, and offers one concrete alternative path forward for PhDs to stay in academia.
Challenges
Several practical challenges come along with the implementation of this recipe, which requires attention and joint efforts from multiple stakeholders:
It still requires financial and organizational resources. In particular, the institutions need to figure out how the PhD contract could be extended and processed in the institutional system and complied with HR-related policies. There is also a need for agreements between the PhDs and their supervisors/departments. Furthermore, RDM capacity for supervising and coordinating these embedded Data Stewards should be planned too.
There is no guarantee that recruiting doctoral students will be successful nor properly match the needs of researchers/research groups.
Despite promising potentials, the RDM support would still be possibly perceived as an additional task allocated to doctoral students. There is no guarantee of a career path in academia from becoming the Data Stewards.
Call for actions
The landscape of academic Data Stewardship has been fast changing and the RDM community has been growing since The Amsterdam Call for Action on Open Science back in 2016. It is time to assess the growth of the profession and the dynamic needs of the research community,
We sincerely hope that policymakers and different stakeholders can start taking mini yet concrete steps on recognizing and professionalizing Data Stewardship and Open Science, in particular:
Offer sustainable funding models that allow doctoral students to formally work as Data Stewards as part of their doctoral education, like teaching and other research services
Formally recognize the contribution of Data Stewardship in research
Support the professional development of Data Stewards with proper training and education
Recognize Data Stewardship as a potential career path in academia
In the afternoon of Day 3, Danny and I met with Belinda Weaver and her colleagues from the library research support services at Griffith University. Belinda shared with us an impressive example of how Griffith Library reinvented its research support services to meet the growing demands of supporting digital research in the 21st century. The Library not only had to upskill their staff but also restructure support services and develop new approaches to training and engagement. Below are some selected snapshots of what Belinda and her team did to support data-intensive research.
Mapping out the needs
In order to decide what services should the library provide and how to do it, the team organised two types of consultations:
With research staff and students, who needed research data support
With support staff at the Library, who offered such support
The first one was essential to understand what are the needs of researchers. Research data management support offered by the Library traditionally focused on issues such as back up strategies, IP and licensing. It turned out that what researchers needed most was support with working with data across the entire research lifecycle and taking into account all the complexities of research projects. The newly surfaced issues were, for example, effectively managing access rights and access control, data security, data governance, but also data clean-up and data-driven research methods.
The internal consultation with the library staff helped to collectively agree which services the library should offer, decide on roles and responsibilities within the library staff members (who should deliver these new services), and to identify the knowledge and skill gaps. Doing the process collaboratively helped everyone understand and accept the need to build new capacity and capability to support data-driven research, and also to realise the roles they needed to play in the process.
Breaking down information silos
After establishing the gaps, the team focused on collaboratively creating a new knowledge base. This was again approached from two different angles:
By looking at specific topics – the team has identified 60 topics where knowledge needed to be updated and consolidated (e.g. APIs, data encryption)
By looking at disciplinary differences and practices (e.g. tools, research methods, data sources)
To ensure that knowledge can be easily shared and exchanged between colleagues and to counteract information silos, the team created templates for both specific knowledge topics, and for mapping out and understanding research disciplines.
Ensuring that such information is easily shareable between team members is essential when it comes to supporting the increasing amount of interdisciplinary research, and also in situations where team members need to switch roles or share tasks and responsibilities.
Skills and awareness
Understanding the needs of researchers and becoming familiar with the knowledge and disciplinary differences in which researchers operate, helped Belinda and her team to adjust the training provided by the Library. It is was particularly interesting for me to learn how the team addresses the ever-growing need for data wrangling skills. This is done through a combination of weekly hacky hours, software carpentry workshops organised once every two months, and yearly Research Bazaar festivals.
Software Carpentry workshops
Software Carpentry workshops teach researchers basic computational skills. Griffith University Library currently has four certified Software Carpentry instructors, which includes two instructor trainers. In addition, some Library staff act as helpers during these workshops. All these help Griffith University run these workshops on a regular basis. All workshop logistics are managed by Griffith’s eResearch Services unit.
Hacky hours
Weekly hacky hours complement the software carpentry workshops. While Software Carpentry workshops are essential for researchers to learn the basic skills they need to start working with code and data, the content of the carpentry workshops is generic. Therefore, researchers who attend Software Carpentry workshops sometimes struggle in implementing the new learning into their daily practices and workflows. Hacky hours invite researchers to pop over to get help finding solutions to their specific problems, or to get advice on working with their own research data.
ResBaz, or Research Bazaar
ResBaz or Research Bazaar is an impressive, three-day-long festival of digital skills for research. In Brisbane, it is organised jointly by Queensland University of Technology, the University of Queensland, Griffith University, the University of Southern Queensland, and Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation.
The first two days of the festival offer myriad of workshops helping researchers learn how to work with digital skills (in addition to Software Carpentry workshops, researchers can also learn how to work with Jupyter Notebooks, how to program with R, or how to do RNA sequencing etc.). The third day consists of talks on various topics: case studies on the use of digital tools and methods; talks on effective collaboration; or seminars on topics issues pertaining to personal and professional development.
While at TU Delft we do run regular carpentry workshops, and piloted drop-in consultations for code and data (our “Coding Lunch and Data Crunch” sessions), so far we haven’t run any big festivals of the like of ResBaz – definitely something worth considering!
MOOC tutors. From left to right: Sarah Jones, Rene van Horik, Alexandra Delipalta, S. Venkat, Ellen Verbakel.
In the second week of the Delivering Research Data Management Services we focused on “Finding the gap” in your RDM Services. One way to find the gap is by using the RISE tool. This tool can be used to define how mature the institution is on topics like research data policy and strategy, digital preservation, training, and active data management.
We asked the learners about their experiences and they found it useful reflecting on this:
“That was a good exercise, naming strengths and challenges. I am always very aware of the challenges, but it is good to reflect a moment on the strengths and realize that we have done some good work already.” Barbara Vermaas
Many learners identified areas in which their organisations were not doing everything well. Some had a lack of money, people, resources or interest from researchers. Several learners also realised that services are in place in their institutions but very diffuse and spread across multiple units.
Learners liked the gap analysis exercise and the SPARC online tool https://sparceurope.org/evaluate-your-rdm-offering. You can see an example output from this above. In the online forum learners shared results which showed a great difference in strengths and weaknesses across organisations. Naturally, some organisations didn’t want to share the outcomes because the information can be very confidential. We encouraged them to speak with others in the organization to evaluate the assessment.
Many learners realised that they didn’t know about all the services already in place in their institution. Their first steps will be to make an inventory of what is available and see how they can align these with their own activities. Collaborating with colleagues to coordinate provision is key.
After finding the gap and having evaluated their efforts so far, the learners started week 3, focusing on how to set up services and good starting points.
Author: Ashley Cryan, Data Manager , TU Delft Digital Competence Centre
Tuesday, October 12 was a momentous day for the TU Delft Digital Competence Centre (DCC). A little more than a year after the new research support team of Data Managers and Research Software Engineers came together for the first time, the Share, Inspire, Impact:TU Delft DCC Showcase Event took place, co-hosted by the TU Delft Library’s Research Data Services team, ICT- R&D / Innovation and the TU Delft High Performance Computing Centre (DHPC).
Researchers from across all faculties at the University joined the virtual live event, aimed at sharing results achieved and lessons learned from collaborating with members of the DCC during hands-on support of projects involving research data and software challenges. The exchange of experiences and ideas that followed was a true reflection of the ingenuity and collaborative spirit that connects and uplifts the entire TU Delft community.
Inspiring opening words from TU Delft Library Director Irene Haslinger invited researchers, staff and representatives from academic communities like Open Science Community Delft and 4TU.ResearchData to reflect together and help distill a common vision for the future of the DCC. The DCC’s core mission is clear: to help researchers produce FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable) data, improve research software, and apply suitable computing practices to increase the efficiency of the research process. Event chairperson Kees Vuik and host Meta Keijzer-de Ruijter guided the discussion based on the fundamental question, how best can researchers and support staff work together to achieve these important goals in practice?
“In the effort to promote and support FAIR data, FAIR Software, and Open Science, everyone has a role.” – Manuel Garcia Alvarez, TU Delft DCC
Manuel Garcia Alvarez began with a presentation on the DCC working model and approach to the above question. After a year of trialling process-in-practice, the support team model is defined by four building blocks based on observed researchers’ needs: Infrastructure and Resources, Training, Hands-On Support, and Community. Researchers require sufficient access to and understanding of IT infrastructure and resources available through the University – robust computing facilities, secure data storage solutions, platforms for digital collaboration – in order to facilitate analysis workflows and achieve their research goals. The DCC support team works closely with staff in the ICT department to ensure that researchers can select, deploy, and manage computational resources properly to support their ongoing needs. Hands-on support is offered by the DCC in the form of support projects which last a maximum of six months, working closely in collaboration with research groups. This type of support blends the domain expertise of the researchers with the technical expertise of the DCC support team members to address specific challenges related to FAIR data/software and computational needs. Researchers can request this type of dedicated support by submitting an application through the DCC website (calls open several times per year).
Of course, the DCC support team came into existence as part of a broader community focused on supporting researchers’ digital needs: one that is made up of the faculty Data Stewards, ICT Innovation, Library Research Services, the DHPC, and the Library team for Research Data Management. The DCC contributes to ongoing training initiatives like Software and Data Carpentry workshops that equip researchers with basic skills to work with data and code, as well as designs custom training in the context of hands-on support provided to research groups. One such example is the “Python Essentials for GIS Learners” workshop, designed by the DCC during support of a project in ABE focused on shifting to programmatic and reproducible analysis of historical maps (the full content of this course is freely available on GitHub).
The program featured a lively Round Table discussion between researchers who received hands-on support from the DCC and the DCC members that supported them, focusing on the DCC model of co-creation to help researchers solve complex and pressing data- and software-related challenges. Researcher panelists Omar Kammouh, Carola Hein, and Liedewij Laan shared their experience working alongside DCC members Maurits Kok, Jose Urra Llanusa, and Ashley Cryan in a spirited hour of moderated discussion. Each researcher panelist was invited first to introduce the project for which they received DCC support in the context of the challenges that inspired them to submit an application to the DCC. Then, DCC members were invited to elaborate on these challenges from their perspective and highlight the solutions implemented in each case. The DCC style of close collaboration over a period of six months was positively received by researchers who found the engagement productive and supportive of their research data management and software development process. The need to develop a kind of “common language” between members of the DCC and research group across domain and technical expertise was highlighted in several cases, and served to clarify concepts, strengthen trust and communication, and build knowledge on both sides that aided in the delivery of robust solutions. Practical benefits from the application of the FAIR principles to researchers’ existing workflows and outputs were also mentioned across cases. Collaboration with the DCC enabled researchers to share their data and software more broadly amongst direct collaborators and externally to the wider international research community. The last question of this discussion was whether Omar, Carola and Liedewij would recommend that other researchers at TU Delft apply for hands-on support from the DCC: the answer was an emphatic yes!
Attendees then had the option to join one of the four thematic breakout sessions: Community Building; Digital Skills and Training; Looking Ahead: Impactful Research Competencies of the Future; and Infrastructure, Technology and Tooling for Scientific Computing. Moderators Connie Clare and Emmy Tsang in the Community Building breakout room invited research support professionals from across universities and countries to share their experience being part of scientific communities, and found that recurring themes of knowledge sharing, inclusivity, friendship and empowerment wove throughout most people’s positive experiences. The discussion in the Digital Skills and Training room, moderated by Meta Keijzer-de Ruijter, Paula Martinez Lavancy, and Niket Agrawal, touched upon existing curricula and training programs available at TU Delft to help researchers and students alike develop strengths in fundamental digital skills like programming and version control. In the Looking Ahead room, moderators Alastair Dunning and Maurits Kok led a lively discussion on challenges related to rapidly advancing technology, and how the provision of ICT services and infrastructure solutions can avoid becoming a kind of “black box” to researchers. The Infrastructure, Technology and Tooling room, led by Jose Urra Llanusa, Kees den Heijer, and Dennis Palagin, discussed researchers’ need for IT infrastructure and technical support in the specific context of their research domain, including specialised tools and security measures that can help facilitate international collaboration. When the group came together in the main room to share summaries of each room’s discussion, the common themes of scalability, collaboration, and a balanced approach to centralised support emerged.
“Support staff need to always work in partnership with researchers. In the future, we need both central and local DCC support and collaboration to continue learning from each other.” – Marta Teperek, Head of Research Data Services and 4TU.ResearchData at TU Delft
The closing words delivered by Rob Mudde, Vice-Rector Magnificus and Vice President Education, were a fitting end to a spirited day of reflection and discussion. Acknowledging the work of many to bring the TU Delft Digital Competence Centre into reality and its ethos as a hug of knowledge, connection and inclusivity, he stated, “As a university, we are a big community – we stand on one another’s shoulders. It’s collective work that we do. You can see how the DCC engages across disciplines to help all go forward.”
The DCC extends its warm gratitude to all those who made the “Share, Inspire, Impact DCC Showcase Event” happen, in particular event planning leads Deirdre Casella and Lauren Besselaar, and all of the panelists, speakers, session leaders, and participants who made the discussion so engaging and memorable. The team looks forward to continuing to work with researchers in the TU Delft community and building capacity toward a shared vision for the future we can all be proud of.
Open Working 