Chalmers University of Technology is one of the leading science and technology universities in northern Europe, with over 2,000 active researchers, coordinating around 400 new, often highly data intensive research projects yearly. Data management planning, at an early stage of a project, is regarded as very important and the university has accordingly adapted steering guidelines stating that all research activities should have a DMP.
Our story started in 2020, when a local instance of DS Wizard was chosen and implemented as the recommended tool for data management planning at the university. The main reason for this choice was that we found it to be not only the most modern and flexible of the available tools, built on a solid platform and including an appealing and versatile user interface, but also - with its data model and focus on machine actionable DMPs - very well-tailored for integration in our existing (and future) workflows.
We have a history of agile development, automation and creating integrations in order to provide good services and value for our researchers, including a locally developed CRIS, and DS Wizard fitted perfectly into this with its API, standardized data model, configurable templates and SSO support. There is now an automated workflow in place, to help researchers getting started with data management planning, while controlling the quality of the metadata and connecting to other services and stakeholders, such as the data protection office. This has not only helped our researchers, by lowering the barriers, but also created a good foundation for building better services in the future, with integrations, high quality metadata and better user experiences for everyone involved.
Urban Andersson, Chalmers Data Office (CDO), Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg
