In the Data Stewardship Wizard, a document template describes how the replies from a questionnaire are composed into a document. This allows to produce various kinds of documents from a single questionnaire by using different templates.
There are several templates available in DSW Registry. The Questionnaire Report template can be used in any project, and it follows the structure of the questionnaire. Then, there are also funder-specific templates: Horizon Europe, Horizon 2020, and Science Europe DMP templates. These follow the structure expected by a funder and can serve for project applications.
Finally, there is the Machine-Actionable DMP (maDMP) template according to the RDA DMP Common Standard. It is suitable for further processing in other tools as it is compliant with the JSON schema provided by the recommendations.
Each template can specify the number of formats that can be used for export. For example, the Questionnaire Report, as well as Horizon Europe, Horizon 2020, and Science Europe templates, can be exported as HTML, a Word document, LaTeX, Markdown, an OpenDocument, or a PDF. Similarly, the Machine-Actionable DMP can be exported into JSON but also into various RDF formats such as RDF/XML, Turtle, TRiG, or JSON-LD.
Anyone can develop a custom template that transforms replies in a questionnaire (knowledge model) in any way. There is no limitation whatsoever; any textual representation can be created by using the well-known Jinja2 templating markup language. It requires basic programming skills (variables, conditions, loops); however, training materials are provided.
Having a custom template may be helpful for various use cases. For example, one may need to submit a DMP to a different funder that requires the following own DMP template. Organization management may want to have a unique project summary with essential information and FAIR metrics on a single page. A data steward may need a mind map visualization of a knowledge model.
The Document Template editor is a tool for creating new document templates or adjusting the existing ones to your needs. You can write the templates directly in DSW and preview them on your projects immediately.
Alternatively, you can use the Template Development Kit (TDK). It is a convenient command-line tool for managing template projects. First, it helps to create a new template or download existing ones from a DSW instance. Then, it can be used to upload a template to a DSW instance, validate it, or create a ZIP package that is importable through the DSW user interface.
The recommendations and other hints on how to develop a template are part of the technical documentation. Finally, there is also a video recording of a TDK tutorial.
