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

• Data Stewardship 
• Research Data and Software training
• TU Delft policies for Research Data, and for Research Software
• Digital Competence Centre (from library perspective)
• Tooling such as DMP Online and Electronic Lab Notebooks (from library perspective)

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

• 4TU.ResearchData repository (Djheuty)
• Developing the 4TU.Community

We are currently interviewing for a Coordinator of Research Infrastructure. The responsibilities of this team include

• Maintaining the current institutional repository
• Building a new institutional repository
• Overseeing the CRIS system (currently Pure, with a public facing portal)
• Understanding new research infrastructure requirements as part of the TU Delft Digital Strategy (eg for Artificial Intelligence, Convergence context)

We will shortly be recruiting for a Head of Scholarly Communications and Publication. The responsibilities of this team include

• Managing the library collection (licences and subscriptions with publishers)
• Running the publishing house TU Delft Open Publishing
• Providing expert analysis and advice on research trends and information
• Provide expert advice and policy development on Open Access

For the position of Coordinator of Research Infrastructure we have received 42 applications. The first round interview process will start in May and end in early June. We have started being in touch with some applicants, and will continue to do this for the next week or so.

For the position of 4TU.ResearchData Director, we have received 16 applications. The first round interviews will take place in 1 and 2 June. We will be in touch with applicants in the week of 15 May.

Presentation given at VOGIN-IP-Lezing, Public Library of Amsterdam, March 2023

The text of the presentation is also available

Authors: Maribel Barrera, Ashley Cryan, Cecile van Heukelom, Paula Martinez Lavanchy, Iulia Popescu, Madeleine de Smaele, Maaike Smit, Marta Teperek, Carlos Utrilla Guerrero, Yan Wang, Aleksandra Wilczynska

The year 2022 has been one of great achievements for the RDS team. Apart from the running existing services and business-as-usual activities, here’s an outline of our successes and accomplishments over the last year:

Research Data Services

Training

• Development of a course on working with personal research data 
• Successful business case for addressing the demand of RDM101 courses for PhD candidates
• Lookout for 2023:
  • Development of a course on data/software management for supervisors
  • Hiring three more trainers to address the demand for RDM101 training and to further work on the implementation of the Vision for Training

People responsible for this work:

• Paula Martinez Lavanchy – leading these activities
• Carlos Utrilla Guerrero (and before Eirini Zormpa) and Maribel Barrera, who helped develop and deliver the training vision
• Course on Personal Data Human subjects in research Nicolas Dintzner (Data steward – Faculty Technology, Management and Policy), Santosh Ilamparuthi (Data steward – Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science), Cath Cotton (Policy Adviser TU Delft – Office Executive Board), Ingeborg Ahlers (Privacy Officer – TU Delft – Privacy Team), all participants in the feedback pilot (incl. data stewards, researchers and support staff)All those that contributed in preparing the training business case: Faculty data stewards, central graduate school, Marta Teperek, Alastair Dunning, Anke Versteeg, Nicole Will, Emmy Tsang, Pim van Schöll  from TU Delft Library and Meta Keijzer-de Ruijter and Julie Beardsell from ICT innovation. 
• Maaike Smit who helped organise training and workshops

Data stewardship

• Further growth of the data stewards team (a few faculties are now in the process of hiring/considering hiring) additional data stewards!
• Successful adoption of the new ‘Data Steward’ UFO profile
• Lookout for 2023:
  • Development of disciplinary guidelines for data management
  • Hiring a central data steward to strengthen the capacity of central coordination and support for data stewardship

People responsible for this work:

• Yan Wang, leading these activities
• Lies de Coninck, who helped with the assessment and implementation of the Data Steward UFO profile
• Anke Versteeg, Amber Leeuwenburg, Andre Groenhof, Chantal Brokerhof, Myrthe van Nus, who helped with adopting the Data Steward UFO profile
• Data Stewards Heather Andrews, Yasemin Turkilmas-van der Velden, Lora Armstrong, Nicolas Dintzner, Jeff Love, Esther Plomp, Diana Popa, Santosh Ilamparuthi, Arthur Newton, who contributed to the TUD Data Stewards task overview, part of the Data UFO profile assessment

Digital Competence Centre (DCC)

• Development of a sustainability plan for the DCC based on successful engagement in long-term projects with the research community
• Publication of the interactive DCC Dashboard which displays the DCC projects completed since 2019 and those currently in progress
• Completion of 37 hands-on data and software projects with over 3350 hours spent in collaboration with research groups across at TU Delft
• Tremendous success (and additional funding!) for the TU Delft R café initiative!
• Lookout for 2023:
  • Evaluation of the UFO profiles of data managers and RSEs
  • Hiring two additional data managers to increase the capacity of the DCC

People responsible for this work:

• Ashley Cryan and Aleksandra Wilczynska, who led data management aspects of the DCC team work and also initiated and are leading the R café initiative
• Julie Beardsell, Coordinator of the DCC team and leading the development of sustainability plans
• Other DCC members: Niket Agrawal,  Manuel Garcia Alvarez, Meta Keijzer-de Ruijter, Maurits Kok, Dennis Palagin, Jose Urra Llanusa 

TU Delft is currently writing a digital strategy for 2024-30. It’s due to be approved in spring 2023, but work is already beginning on its implementation. 

The strategy has eight sections

1. Students and Education 
2. Research and Innovation
3. People and Community
4. Campus and Service Provision
5. Digital Skills 
6. Data
7. Security & Privacy
8. Digital Infrastructure in the workplace

Along with Robert van Bremeen from ICT, I am responsible for the research and innovation section. We have identified four key areas where the university’s approach to digital can have a positive impact on the practice of research. These followed discussions with those writing the Digital Strategy and workshops involving researchers and others from the university.

The workshops identified some broad themes. For example, the crucial importance of a trusted infrastructure for sharing data; the amount of unstructured data that was created by researchers but never reused; the importance of good training, and staff support; and the growing importance of software.

The themes were summarised as the four areas shown in the image below.

We then took this a step further, and identified both existing initiatives and new ones that are needed in order to turn the four areas into specific, actionable projects. 

This draft diagram still needs some work, but it gives an indication of these initiatives.

This discussion is of course just the first step. The work now begins of turning these fine ideas into practice. 
For this step, ICT and the Library will appoint a kwartiermaker to explore how this list of initiatives can be turned into a programme with specific projects under it.  The programme currently has the name of the Research Hub.

The kwartiermaker will be discussing these initiatives with researchers, support staff, managers and others across the university – in conversations, meetings, workshops and other forums. The goal is to have a defined programme for the Research Hub, including a list of projects by mid 2023. 

In his novel The Kingdom (link to WorldCat), which concerns the origin of the Biblical Gospels, French novelist Emmanuel Carrère makes a sudden detour into the difficulties of digital preservation:

In the more than twenty years that I’ve been using computers, everything I’ve written by hand is still in my possession, for example the notebooks I base this book on, while without exception everything I typed directly onto the screen has disappeared.

Of course, I made all kinds of backups, and backups of my backups, just like everyone said I should, but only the ones I printed out on paper have survived.

The others were saved on floppy disks, sticks, external drives—all supposedly much safer but ultimately obsolete one after the next—and are now as inaccessible as the tapes we listened to in our youth.

(page 56)