Activities

2023-11-20 After a series of updates improving user interface, metadata presentation, and generation workflow, as well as new dataset additions sent by the SFB teams, the SFB1451 data catalog (data portal) is moved to the official domain, https://data.sfb1451.de

2023-11-14 From Data to Diamonds - an event for the Research Data Day (Tag der Forschungsdaten) in North Rhine-Westphalia, hosted at RWTH Aachen. Presenting a poster about developments in DataLad software ecosystem motivated by the SFB1451.

2023-10-17 INM Retreat at FZJ: a tutorial on lightweight data publication on Jülich data (an instance of Dataverse) with DataLad. (slides)

2023-09-18 – 2023-09-20 INCF Neuroinformatics Assembly 2023: presenting a poster Distributed data management for large collaborative projects: DataLad ecosystem in Collaborative Research Center 1451 and a DataLad tutorial during the Practical guide to overcome the reproducibility crisis in small animal neuroimaging: workflows, tools, and repositories session. (poster, tutorial materials)

2023-07-12 A spreadsheet template and a set of definitions, together with instructions are provided to allow data catalog submissions based on manually entered dataset descriptions. This is accompanied with datalad-tabby software and format specification, which we use for converting submitted spreadsheets into linked data objects.

2023-05-31 Completion of a development project carried out across May to deliver software utilities for managing the INM-ICF (Imaging Core Facility) data store at Research Center Jülich (docs).

2023-04-20 SFB retreat. INF session on data management for computational modelling.

2023-04-18 A round of updates to the SFB1451 data catalog: 10 datasets from 5 projects listed (9 of which are publically accessible).

2023-04-18 Added a list of recipes for generating DataLad datasets from data already published to data repositories such as Dataverse and Gene Expression Omnibus.

2023-04-03 Updates to the handling of Z03 motor assessment data: introducing encryption at rest.

2023-03-21 Completion of a first functional (unreleased) version of DataLad REDCap extension.

2023-03-08 One-day workshop "Version Control Systems; Reproducible Data Analyses with DataLad" as part of INF methods course, "Programming and Data analysis with Python".

2022-12-15 Meeting with C03 to talk about how MRI data is currently accessed.

2022-12-14 Meeting with A02: DataLad overview, chat about technicalities of microsopy image exchange between projects.

2022-11-30 Mini-workshop about data publication with DataLad.

2022-11-17 Talking about DataLad and distributed data management at INM-7 seminar at Jülich.

2022-11-14 Meeting with C03 about RedCap.

2022-11-10 Third installment of the Research Data Management with DataLad online workshop.

2022-11-08 Meeting with A06 to chat about DataLad.

2022-10-25 Second release of DataLad-Gooey (v. 0.2.0) with many improvements.

2022-10-05 Meeting with A07 to discuss available storage and backup strategies.

2022-09-27 DataLad-Gooey v. 0.1.0, the first version of a graphical user interface (GUI) for DataLad, is released.

2022-08-19 PI Workshop on research data management. An opportunity to present an overview of existing systems for decentralised data management and discuss related chalenges.

2022-07-25 User interface update for Z03 data entry portal (human motor assessment centre).

2022-06-22 Meeting with C04: introductions and general discussion on data types and workflows.

2022-06-21 Meeting with C01 & X01: exploring DataLad usage with University-provided S3 storage for lab-level backup and collaboration.

2022-06-03 SFB Retreat and ECR & Postdoc retreat. Formal presentations and informal discussions. We had a talk (INF progress report) and a poster (Distributed Research Data Management in CRC1451).

2022-04-28 Release of version 0.2 of datalad-next extension for DataLad. The extension contains additional, broadly applicable functionality. The release was strongly inspired by SFB1451 and its primary feature is the ability to store DataLad datasets on WebDAV servers (including widely available cloud storage systems such as nextcloud / owncloud, as well as institutional services like European Open Science Cloud's B2DROP).

2022-04-28 Second installment of the Research Data Management with DataLad online workshop, with 16 participants, spanning two half-days on April 27-28.

2022-01-13 Workshop Research Data Management with DataLad for SFB's early career researchers. We held the 10-participant online workshop over two half-days, on January 12-13. We started the new year with this event, and we are very happy with how it went. Written materials are publically available. See our workshops page for details.

2021-12-17 Use case–specific DataLad demo: designing an institutional storage of raw MRI data, linking raw (DICOM) and converted (NIfTI) datasets (with C06).

2021-12-10 Use case–specific DataLad demo: creating datasets, publishing to GIN, sharing data between teams (with A02 & C01).

2021-10-15 Meeting with C06 to discuss MRI data acquisition and storage: overview of the current infrastructure and data flow. We exchanged initial ideas about introducing DataLad into existing workflow and plan to follow that up with more technical discussions in the near future. Users would obtain datalad datasets pointing to collected data, while access rules would remain unchanged.

2021-10-08 Meeting dedicated to mouse PET with A02 and C01 projects. Discussed data origin (where data are collected, what kinds of data need to be preserved, where they are stored) and outlined a desired data flow. Explored the requirements, environment, and possibilities for generalization.

2021-09-30 INM Hackathon at FZ Jülich resulted in the first public release of an XNAT extension for DataLad. The datalad-xnat works with regular local XNAT deployments, but also has been tested with ConnectomeDB, NITRC IR, and XNAT Central. It can do full or constrained exports of entire instances, individual projects, single subjects, or particular acquisitions, with support for authenticated or anonymous access.

2021-09-10 SFB Retreat. Productive discussions focusing on identifying areas of concern and finding potential soutions for data management. Selected themes:

  • DataLad: the role of DataLad is to provide a meta-layer on top of existing data structures to enable discovery of distributed data by future users.
  • Storage: data storage and access is under the control of the sites collecting the data. Only the information about the storage content will be centralised.
  • REDCap: some sites use REDCap for storage of clinical data. There is a need for export, storage, cross-referencing solutions in the long term.
  • Several sites are evaluating their DICOM storage solutions.
  • A workshop on research data management with datalad is being planned; tentative date: last week of October.