Research data management
IT Services of ETH Zurich provide Research Data Management services to all research groups of ETH Zurich working in quantitative research fields, to help them in the process of annotating, storing and managing all experimental and computational data at any stage of the research process, from initial collection onwards.
The Research Data Management services provided by IT Services of ETH Zurich are based on the in-house developed data management platform external pageopenBIScall_made.
Two types of services are currently available:
- ETH Research Data Hub (ETH RDH)
Private account in a multi-group openBIS installation. Each research group has dedicated storage space on NAS for data files and dedicated Inventory and laboratory notebook folders accessible via a web user interface. - ETH Research Data Node (ETH RDN)
Private openBIS installation for a single research group.
Nowadays funding agencies, journals, and academic institutions increasingly require research data to be published according to the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) data principles.
In order to guarantee data FAIRness, every step of the research process needs to be accurately documented and data need to be securely stored, backed up and annotated with enough metadata to make them reusable and reproducible.
The Research Data Management services provided by IT Services of ETH Zurich are based on the data management platform external pageopenBIScall_made, which has additional note-keeping capabilities and inventory management option for experimental scientists, and can thus help researchers make their data FAIR.
A research group is defined as a group of ETH Zurich members who perform computational or experimental research and refers to a group leader with its own fund code.
ETH Research Data Hub
Access to the ETH RDH for a research group is subject to the following admittance criteria:
- Quantitative experimental or computational laboratories with medium data volumes (<50,000 objects and/or datasets).
- Limited lab-specific customisation required.
- No confidential data (personal data or any other sensitive information).
The ETH RDH service is free up to 100 GB of data per research group. Storage up to 1 TB will be charged at half the regular rate of the NAS storage provided by IT Services of ETH Zurich. Regular rates apply for any additional storage.
A request to access the ETH RDH can be made via the IT Shop.
ETH Research Data Node
The ETH RDN service provides a private openBIS installation to individual research groups, allowing more flexibility and more scope for customization over the ETH RDH service. In addition, a separate JupyterHub server for analysis of data stored in openBIS with Jupyter notebooks, can also be set up on request.
The ETH RDN service has the following costs:
- one-off setup fee: 2000CHF. This includes installation and initial consultation for group-based customization.
- yearly maintenance fee: 1000CHF. This includes regular infrastructure and software maintenance/upgrades and user support.
- VM costs: around 300CHF/year for a standard VM (separate VMs are used for openBIS and JupyterHub).
- NAS storage costs based on use.
The ETH RDN service can be requested by email to the Scientific IT Services of ETH Zurich (SIS) helpdesk: .
Access
The ETH RDH and ETH RDN services provide web-based access to the openBIS platform. Supported web browsers are Firefox, Chrome, and Safari.
ETH RDH access can be requested via the
Documentation
Documentation on the usage of openBIS is available on the external pageopenBIS websitecall_made.
Trainings
Scientific IT Services of ETH Zurich (SIS) offer regular openBIS trainings throughout the year. These are announced via the mailing list and are advertised on the SIS website.
Mailing list
To subscribe to the mailing list go to: ETHZ openBIS users