ELIXIR-CONVERGE - D1.4 ELIXIR Best Practices recommendations

The scope of this deliverable was to provide final best practice recommendations incorporating use of data brokering, business models and pan-European operations, with the aim of capturing, collating, and disseminating the collective research data management (RDM) expertise that resides across the ELIXIR member Nodes. 

The data management guidelines aim to promote knowledge sharing and capacity building among the member Nodes, as well as harmonising the guidance across Nodes, while at the same time taking the varying local circumstances at different ELIXIR Nodes into account. The best practice content has been a deeply integrated effort by many partners in most of the Nodes through the work of WP1, WP2, WP3, WP5, WP7, WP8 and WP9, and through the establishment of the Data Management Network. Through the strong position of the RDMkit information resource as a major authority source of life science RDM knowledge, it was also possible to engage contributors beyond those that were participating in the CONVERGE project. 

Establishing services to broker data submissions is an effective way to facilitate the flow of FAIR data from life science research to Core Data Resources (CDR), ELIXIR Deposition Databases (EDD) and ELIXIR Community data resources. With the aim to explore existing practice and develop models around brokering data (including the tools, services and training around this) to specific ELIXIR Deposition Resources, three main brokering explorations have been investigated.

The discipline of data stewardship is a relatively new one that will become increasingly more important over time. Data management support services will have to operate for the foreseeable future, and consequently the means by which e.g. an ELIXIR Node can provide sustainable long-term services needs to be explored. To this end, surveys have been conducted to scope the current business model landscape, and put together as a Business Model Catalog to serve as inspiration for sustaining node service operations for data management. Existing business models that were currently implemented by the ELIXIR Nodes, as well as current levels of data management service provisioning, have been reviewed to investigate long-term sustainability strategies for supporting the provision of data management/data stewardship services . 

To encourage harmonisation in the way ELIXIR Nodes provide data management support to research projects, an operating model for harmonised data management in European projects has been developed as a guide for data managers and data stewards to assist researchers in offering advice on responsible management approaches in life-science domains. The model itself is a set of recommendations and best practices in data management applicable in European projects, guaranteeing an overall harmony in data management practice.

Conclusions:

• A pan-European network of data experts that meets monthly, serving as a conduit for information exchange between individuals in the network and researchers/data stewards within institutions represented by the node.  This community of practice can serve future and sustained projects within ELIXIR, with a synergistic international exchange of solutions, thus contributing with training and documenting of best practices even after the project CONVERGE ends.

• A comprehensive collection of best practice guidelines relevant to the life science domain has been developed and refined over the years, and has been made available through the RDMkit resource that has been designed and established by WP3. The content of the guidelines is presented through several orthogonal entryways – the Data life cycle, Your role, Your domain, Your tasks, Tool assembly, and National resources. The RDMkit has become a major authoritative source of life science RDM knowledge.

• The guidelines have served to help in identifying and prioritising data management training needs and the development of training material. 

• Contributions of content have come from a large number of Nodes and experts, including members not only in WP1, but also WP2, WP3, WP5, WP7, WP8 and WP9,  from the broader Data Management Network, as well as experts outside of ELIXIR. 

• Content has been generated in a crowdsourcing manner, both during hackathons and contentathons organised in topic-specific focus groups. This process has sparked discussions that in themselves are an important part of the knowledge-sharing and capacity building process and the results from these discussions are available in an accessible manner in the RDMkit. 

• Through WP1 T1.2, extensive discussions have been had to devise brokering models for a variety of different life science groups. This has allowed valuable insight into the needs of those who openly share / would like to openly share data on a large-scale. These discussions also benefit the target repositories through feedback as to how their services can be improved.

• Ultimately, T1.2 highlights a brokering landscape, showing a variety of ways that data brokering can be performed, the different roles brokers can take on, and the ways in which these can benefit the  scientific community (e.g.  by enhancing data sharing and/or metadata quality).

• Most Nodes are in an establishment phase in their data management operations with frequent lack of established business models, and services delivery are only supported by public subsidisation in almost all the Nodes.

• Nodes are moving towards the exploration of new sustainability strategies and models where part of the costs are recovered from final users.

• A single one-size-fit-all sustainability strategy can not be advocated for all Nodes. The implemented business model strategies can be grouped according to the gradient of public subsidisation and user/customer contribution under three business models (in the so called Business Model Catalog): Free, Freemium and Pay per use.

• A harmonised operating model for providing data management support to projects has been designed, that follows these steps: i) Establishment of Data Expert Network, ii) Implementation of Data Life Cycle into the operating model, iii) Application of Best Practices reflected in RDMkit, iv) Mapping of supporting IT infrastructure and computational resources availability and utilisation, and v) Funding model of the data management as an ELIXIR Service.