Coscine – Your Platform for Research Data Management

Logo taken from: RWTH Blog

What is it?

Coscine is, together with RWTH Publications, the main resource to archive and publish data that cannot use other publicly available resources.

One of the goals for the second funding period of the CRC-1382 as stated in the proposal is to “empower scientists in CRC 1382 to use Coscine efficiently.” As the data steward for the CRC, I am able to assist in achieving this goal. Please reach out if you are interested in getting started with Coscine by contacting me via email.

Why should I use Coscine?

Coscine offers researchers a safe and supportive integration platform for collaborative research and to fullfill the FAIR principles.

Researchers using Coscine have their data stored and linked with cooresponding metadata which gives context to the data. This context is what helps to meet the findability, accessibility, and reusability standards within the FAIR principles.

Image taken from: https://forschungsdaten.info/

How to get started with Coscine?

  • First, check the link here to see if you are eligible to use the RWTH Coscine service. If you are eligible then you can login to Coscine using your RWTH Single-Sign On or using your ORCiD (for more information regarding ORCid please see RDM Newsletter 14).
  • Once you’ve logged in then you can create your own project or accept an invitation to an existing project to start collaborating with your team.
  • After you have created a project you can then make a resource.

Note:

Each resource will require a metadata profile which you can select from a list of existing metadata profiles. If you find that no metadata profile matches your data sets then you can visit Applying Interoperable Metadata Standards (AIMS) to create a metadata profile that is tailored to your dataset.

AIMS and Metadata Profile Example

This is the AIMS website that is used to create metadata profiles.

 

This is an example of a metadata profile.

Project Structure

This is an example of project structure.

Note the CRC-1382 Project.

This is the structure that is possible with Coscine. Within the CRC-1382 project there are subprojects that are part of the CRC which contain resources where project specific data and metadata is stored.

Resource Example

This is what resources look like within a project.

This is an example of what it looks like upon opening a resource. You can see the metadata profile of this resource on the right.

Images taken from https://coscine.rwth-aachen.de/

RDM & Coscine

Benefits of Coscine include:

  • Storage space: Access free storage space for participating universities and projects.

  • Collaboration: Access for all project members

  • Metadata: Automatically linked to project data

  • Individuality: Metadata can be created project-specifically as application profiles

  • Archiving: Archive project data for 10 years in place

Taken from https://docs.coscine.de/en/

This is the newsletter of the CRC 1382 in which regularly topics regarding (good) research data managements are discussed.

The information provided are selected by the data steward Catherine Gonzalez.

They are tailored to meet the standards and requirements of the UKA and RWTH.

If you think that the tips and tricks provided do not fit to your data I would be happy to discuss it and take a look at your data and its organization.