AFFORD: A Framework for Avoiding the Open Research Data Dump

Requiring open access to research data is a necessary step towards credible, reliable, and reproducible research, but it is not sufficient. Unless tools and infrastructure for proper data curation are provided, the requirement is bound to produce data dumps where data are freely accessible, but of limited utility. Publishing data for further use is highly resource-intensive, which is the key reason why it is rarely done. We aim to establish a sustainable support framework that lowers the barriers to publishing data and other research outputs in an accessible form by bundling know-how, workflows, and tools under the umbrella of one organizational entity of the respective Swiss university. We further propose to accompany a complex reference research project through the full cycle of experiment planning, research output creation, analysis, curation, and publishing. We will thereby quantify the resources needed for the support framework, field-test the framework, and optimize it. This project-based, data-driven approach will improve the sustainability of the support framework by providing reliable resource requirement estimates to decision makers at the university level. It will further accelerate acceptance by the research community by ensuring that the support framework has reached a sufficient level of maturity before it is made available to all university researchers.

Project Lead

Gorka Fraga Gonzalez, Hester van de Wiel

CRS Collaborators

Eva Furrer, Leonard Held

External Collaborators

Vartan Kurtcuoglu, Diane de Zélicourt, Willy Kuo

Publications