16th January 2014

EUDAT is inviting research communities, research projects and individual researchers to make use of its data services that are available at a European scale and is offering free resources and expertise to pilot collaboration projects as part of its Collaborative Data Infrastructure where users, community centres and large data centres collaboratively tackle data challenges. Interested parties are invited to submit their proposals by 26th February 2014.

What is EUDAT?

EUDAT is a pan-European data initiative that started in October 2011 and which brings together a unique consortium of 26 partners, including research communities, national data and HPC centres, technology providers, and funding agencies from 13 countries.EUDAT provides an integrated solution for finding, sharing, storing, replicating, staging and performing computations with primary and secondary research data. EUDAT is currently rolling out its first set of data services which are as follows.

  • B2SHARE: a user-friendly, reliable and trustworthy way for researchers and communities to store and share small-scale research data coming from diverse contexts. This service is open to all researchers and EUDAT is looking for special collaboration with communities to develop customized solutions.
  • B2SAFE: a robust, safe and highly-available replication service allowing community and departmental repositories to replicate and preserve their research data. Different access and deployment options are offered which range from tailored solutions for Fedora and DSpace repository systems via simplified utilization options to a full integration of repositories with the network of EUDAT data nodes.
  • B2STAGE: a reliable, efficient, easy-to-use service to ship large amounts of research data between EUDAT data nodes and workspace areas of high-performance computing systems.
  • B2FIND: a simple and user-friendly portal to find research data collections stored in EUDAT data centres and other repositories. B2FIND harvests metadata from diverse sources, maps it, and makes it publically available through its cross-disciplinary catalogue.

Who can participate?

The call is open to all European initiatives and research communities. EUDAT services target a broad range of disciplines, in particular those looking for simple solutions to store and/or perform computations with research data, or for a robust data infrastructure to manage, access use, re-use and preserve their data.

How to apply?

Interested applicants are expected to provide a short description of their research community and data requirements, as well as a description of the proposed collaboration project which should address at least one of the following areas: customisation of an easy-to-use deposit service to store and share research data (B2SHARE), replication of large data sets across several sites (B2SAFE), staging of data to computing environments – in particular those provided by EGI and PRACE (B2STAGE), and harvesting of metadata records (B2FIND). EUDAT also welcomes proposals willing to contribute to and enhance existing services in the areas of semantic mapping and annotation, real-time data handling, workflow execution environments, and data lifecycle management.

Applicants can contact the EUDAT team if they need assistance with the preparation of their proposal at eudat-collaboration@postit.csc.fi

 

Important dates:

Deadline for submission 26th February 2014
Proposal Evaluation

27th February – 15th March 2014 (During this period you will be contacted for any further information that is required.)
Notification

20th March 2014 (All applicants will receive information about the outcome of the evaluation.)
Implementation

1st April 2014 (Successful applicants will begin implementation with EUDAT.)

How will the projects be selected?

EUDAT will select two categories of projects: a first category will be piloted in 2014 as part of the FP7 framework under which EUDAT is currently funded. A second category will be taken into consideration for implementation in 2015 as part of H2020. The projects will be categorizedon the basis of their estimated level of complexity. Projects selected for early implementation might also be pursued through H2020. EUDAT is ready to provide services NOW even to large projects that are envisioned to be completed after 2014.

Proposals will be shortlisted according to the following criteria:

  • Relevance of the project with respect to the current EUDAT service roadmap,
  • Organizational feasibility and sustainability aspects of the project with regards to the expertise and human resources which are available at EUDAT and the applicant sites,
  • Technical feasibility with regard to the availability of storage and network capacities and capabilities which can be provided via EUDAT,
  • Expected benefits of the project for the immediate research community,
  • Expected benefits for European researchers beyond the immediate research community from which the project originates, and
  • Contribution to Open Access.

The selection of the projects will be carried out by the EUDAT Executive Board.

Data Management and Open Access Support

EUDAT provides an infrastructure to share and preserve research data and supports the EC Guidelines on Data Management in Horizon 2020 and the Pilot on Open Research Data in Horizon 2020. For further information on these topics, read the EUDAT Policy on Data Management and Open Access to Research Data.