Data Management

Experimental and theoretical approaches by MBExC scientists are often data intensive and require a technical and organizational backbone for research data management.

As data management and data science tasks are highly integrated MBExC has recently formed the Data Science Task Force (DSTF). The task force members are experts in statistics, machine learning, medical informatics, mathematical modeling and high performance computing (HPC). They will coordinate the research data strategy, consult and cooperate with MBExC scientist and manage the interaction with strong local and national partners that contribute to data management and analysis within MBExC.

Research data management (RDM) within MBExC aims at Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR) data management. Furthermore, our research data platform (RDP) ensures that all essential data quality facets – documentation, curation, storage, and publication of research data – are linked within the same system. Underlying the RDM are domain specific databases that link primary data and metadata and enable easy data sharing within MBExC as well accessing the data for processing on HPC.

The RDP concept involves data and metadata enrichment and standardization by integrating community standards and persistent identifiers wherever applicable and thus connects MBExC research data to international standards. In particular, the RDP component menoci connects data to persistent identifiers (e.g. ePIC PIDs, DOIs, SciCrunch IDs, NCBI IDs) and metadata standards (e.g. ISA-TAB, Dublin Core), providing a design that enhances semantic interoperability of datasets and contributing to FAIR and sustainable RDM solutions.

RDP publications are interconnected with MBExC-related data in the Göttingen Research Online (GRO) services provided by the eResearch Alliance (eRA): the Göttingen Campus publications, research data and instruments portals (GRO.publications), GRO.data, GRO.instruments, respectively).

Data analysis solutions established by MBExC experts are implemented on GWDG resources and are currently being integrated with the RDP. Thereby analysis results will be linked to the primary data and so that they can be published in a FAIR manner. Providing these services is supported by service centers and expert networks such as KISSKI, CAIMed, and CIDAS.

The MBExC DSTF coordinates experience exchange with other RDM-related activities at Göttingen Campus (e.g. eResearch Alliance, Medical Research Data Integration Centre (UMG-MeDIC), CIDAS, CIDBN) and nationally (such as the National Research Data Infrastructure (in particular Base4NFDI, NFDI4Health, NFDI4BioImage, NFDI neuroscience), the Medical Informatics Initiative, German Centers for Health Research and Network University Medicine).