About
Documentation for communities about the EUDAT B2SHARE service.
Modified: 7 June 2021
Synopsis
B2SHARE is a web-based service for storing and publishing data sets, intended for European scientists and communities. The service utilises other EUDAT services for reliability and data retention, while storing the data at trusted repositories with national backing, in order to provide a professionally managed and supported IT environment. B2SHARE service providers have agreed on a Memorandum of Understanding with the EUDAT consortium and keep the data accessible for at least 2 years. In the unlikely event that the service will be terminated, the service provider has the obligation to announce this at least one month in advance, and all deposited data and metadata will either be kept accessible or handed over to another EUDAT service provider so that the service can be continued. Monitoring of the service is provided via the EUDAT central monitoring facilities.
B2SHARE is designed to be easy to use and currently supports access restrictions, registration of PIDs for any uploaded data object or file, additions of checksums and transition of all metadata information to the EUDAT metadata search. Importantly, B2SHARE enforces the inclusion of metadata accompanying the deposited data, so as to increase the value and facilitate sharing of your assets. Metadata is defined in metadata schemas and includes default mandatory fields as well as fields defined by the community under which the deposit is made. As a default, uploaded materials are published with Open Access. Although access can be restricted at the time of upload, EUDAT strongly encourages Open Access to research data in accordance with the policy of the European Commission. B2SHARE hosts a tool to help the user choose the correct licence for their data.
How to access the B2SHARE service
B2SHARE is available from the following URL: https://b2share.eudat.eu.
Communities
B2SHARE enforces the grouping of dataset publications and users through communities. Communities act as an organisation within the service to contain the datasets of a specific European community's researchers and their members and to regulate publications through various policies.
Communities are easily identified on the landing pages of dataset publications in B2SHARE which provide a link to the community landing page itself. This landing page provides an overview of the community, the latest publications and the community metadata schema.
Metadata schema
A community can define its own metadata schema fields on top of the default metadata schema defined by B2SHARE. This way a community is able to enforce any researcher that publishes data under that community to include additional information about the dataset uploaded.
Policies
Community policies enable a community to limit the access for users and enforce workflows. Policies can be changed at all times, but modifications to communities must be done by the B2SHARE administrators. Please contact EUDAT through the webform if your community wants to make changes.
Currently the following community policies are supported:
- Members-only dataset publications
A community can make sure that only members of that community within B2SHARE can create new deposits that will be part of the community. This ensures that a select group of users is able to publish new datasets and enables for example data stewardship workflows. If this policy is disabled all users of a B2SHARE instance are able to publish under that community. For example, the EUDAT community is open to any user. - Publication review workflows
If required, a community can enable the publication review workflow to include a quality control step before a dataset becomes publicly findable after submitting it. If enabled, the community administrator(s) will be able to approve a publication based on its current metadata and included files. If declined, the original creator of the publication can make edits and resubmit it.
Known issues
Although the review workflow policy can be enabled, it is currently not fully implemented and therefore not supported. In future updates of B2SHARE this will become available.
Support
Please visit our training site on GitHub for B2SHARE and other hands-on training material.
Our B2SHARE presentations offer training material for the service.
Support for B2SHARE is available via the EUDAT ticketing system through the webform.
If you have comments on this page, please submit them through the EUDAT support request system.
Document data
Version: 1.0
Authors:
Hans van Piggelen (SURF)