Research data management and research infrastructure

Good research data management and research infrastructure are tailored to individual projects and help researchers to concentrate on what is really important: the research. Lena Dreher and Ilja Werner, CASCB research data managers, offer services and resources for research data management and open access publishing throughout the whole research life cycle.

Together with lab manager Jan Peters, our technical assistant Yvonne Hertenberger, and Imaging Hangar project manager Mathias Günther, they provide research infrastructure in support of excellent research.

Here, we provide an overview of our main services.

Research data life cycle © Abschnitt eins, CASCB

Plan your research project

  • Data Management Plan Template specifically created for the needs of CASCB projects
  • Advice and help with writing Data Management Plans (our template or templates of other funders, e.g. European Commission)
  • Evaluation and reviewing of Data Management Plans
  • Advice and help with planning data management throughout all stages of the project (similar to the Data Life Cycle stages)
  • Advice and help with constructing experiment setups
  • Advice and support for animal welfare if required (also in cooperation with the MPI and the Animal Research Facility (TFA))
  • Advice and support for handling personal data during the project
  • Completing the required university forms in accordance with Baden- Württemberg’s State Data Protection Act
  • Planning data security
  • Translating forms and information sheets for participants

Generate data

  • Largest collective behaviour lab in Germany, cornerstone for research of large-scale collective behaviour
  • Help with construction of experiment setups (expertise and hands-on)
  • Help and advice on constructing new setups that have never been tried before
  • Help with generating data during experiments
  • Provision of storage facilities for hot data phase in the Imaging Hangar, Imaging Hive, and on application
  • Setting up of specific IT infrastructure

Process & analyze data

Help and advice on

  • Data security questions
  • Storage questions
  • Provision of modular extendable
  • storage for warm data phase
  • Support with high-performance computing via connection to federal state initiative bwHPC

Publish & share data

Help and advice on publishing options (choosing repositories or other suitable places)

  • Help and advice on licences
  • Zenodo community for CASCB data
  • Advice and training on reusability measures for datasets (UTF-8, non-proprietary formats, appropriate metadata standards, good documentation)

Archive data

Provision of cold data storage via additional Network Attached Storage systems (NAS), tape archive, library, and connection to federal state initiative bwSFS for long-term storage of research data

  •  Advice on archiving options with persistent identifiers
  •  Advice on publishing with embargo if possible

Overall services

Training and support in

  • All aspects of FAIR principles and their implementation in daily work
  • All aspects of data management throughout the Data Life Cycle (all stages of a project)
  • Open-door policy for questions and queries
  • Appointments not required, but available at short notice
  • Individual advice
  • Discretion if wanted
  • Connection established to further expertise at the university or the MPI