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SWISSUbase

 

Project summary

Many research institutions in Switzerland are confronted with the challenges of managing research data and ensuring long-term preservation and accessibility, but do not have the tools nor the knowledge needed to fulfill the requirements of Open Data. Hence, a national, public, sustainable and cross-disciplinary solution is needed. SWISSUbase will offer such a solution.

SWISSUbase is a research data service that provides a technical environment and services for the management of research projects and the archiving, dissemination, and promotion of research data and metadata. SWISSUbase takes FORSbase, the well-established data service for the social sciences, to the next level. As a result, SWISSUbase offers the universities in Switzerland a comprehensive, trustworthy and certified solution to manage and preserve research data from all scientific disciplines. SWISSUbase fulfils the FAIR data principles and is compliant with international data and metadata standards.

For more information download the documentation.

Project duration: 01.01.2019 – 31.12.2020

Funding: CHF 653'042

Partners

FORS, University of Zurich, University of Lausanne, SWITCH

 

Project results:

The data service SWISSUbase will be available to the research institutions in Switzerland in January 2021 and provide major benefits for partner institutions, data producers and data consumers.

Benefits for partner institutions

  • trusted and certified in-house solution for researchers to archive their data for the long term
  • connectivity and interoperability on the European level (ERICs, EOSC, etc.) and the national level (SNSF P3)
  • sharing of development costs
  • data protection in a secure environment (storage on SWITCH servers in Switzerland, GDPR compliance, access control, backup policies)
  • CoreTrustSeal-certified research data infrastructure (services, platform and technical infrastructure)
  • personal and tailored archiving expertise and support from SWISSUbase
  • quality control by archiving experts from SWISSUbase ensure high quality of deposited data and metadata
  • expertise from SWISSUbase in international metadata standards (e.g. DDI for the social sciences), user management, and certification processes
  • improved visibility of the data and of the data producers

Benefits for data producers

  • common workspace for research project teams to manage research data and metadata, synchronised with SWITCHdrive
  • data published in a FAIR, OAIS-compliant, and non-commercial repository (requirement of the SNSF)
  • data producers control the access to their data by defining the conditions of access to their data, ranging from open to highly restricted
  • certified, trustworthy environment for long-term preservation of data
  • free persistent identifiers for data (DOIs) for all published datasets
  • standardised data citations for all datasets for use in journal publications
  • data producers receive information about who has downloaded their data, and for which purposes
  • data producers can improve the visibility of their data, making their work and data discoverable and reusable within the larger scientific community, at national and international levels
  • data producers gain in visibility as active players in their discipline in Switzerland

Benefits for data consumers

  • an online public catalogue with advanced search functionality for data and metadata discovery
  • data consumers can trust that data, metadata, and documentation are quality-controlled
  • users of data have access to professional (human) service for discovery and access
  • data for reuse or replication are accompanied by adequate documentation
  • users receive a notification when previously downloaded data have been updated