4TU.ResearchData; a community-driven approach for building an open, domain-specific repository for data and software

4TU.ResearchData is an international data repository service for the science, engineering and design domains, led by the four technical universities in the Netherlands. Since 2023, the repository service runs on in-house developed free and open source software called Djehuty. Through Djehuty, we are facilitating contributions from the 4TU.ResearchData community and are collaborating on its use as a multi-organisational repository system. At 4TU.ResearchData we strongly believe that a community-driven development approach allows for rapid iteration and improvement of our service, as bugs are identified and fixed, features are suggested and implemented, and documentation is refined by the very users who engage with the software daily. For users, the ability to influence the development of the data repository is empowering and leads to a service that more closely aligns with their needs. Additionally, by using open standards and protocols we are aiming for a service that is flexible and enables smooth integrations with other tools and services. In this presentation we will address and showcase the value of community contributions and collaborations to meet domain-specific needs and share future plans to support these further.