Frequently asked questions

4TU.ResearchData is a data and software repository for science, engineering and design domains, as well as support services and a vibrant community around them.

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4TU.Federation is the federation of the four Dutch universities of technology: Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e), University of Twente (UT), Wageningen University and Research Centre (WUR). Founded in 2007 as 3TU, the Federation name changed to 4TU in 2016 when WUR joined forces.

Visit the 4TU.Federation website for more information.

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4TU.ResearchData helps researchers publish their research data and software and make it available in the long-term. In addition, 4TU.ResearchData offers researchers community support, training opportunities, thematic events, funds to help them make their data FAIR, as well as consultancy support.

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Anyone from science, engineering and design can use 4TU.ResearchData to upload and publish their research data and software.

Learn more on our Getting Started webpage.

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A trustworthy repository is confirmed as complying with requirements related to organisational governance, data management and technical infrastructure. Together, these requirements provide assurance that the data provided are from a trustworthy repository.

For 4TU.ResearchData, the CoreTrustSeal accreditation provides researchers with the assurance that their data held in our repository will remain useful and meaningful into the future. The accreditation further assures funders, publishers and other stakeholders that resources are findable, accessible, understandable and reusable over time, thus enabling reproducibility of research and data reuse for future discoveries.

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In 2016, the ‘FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship’ were published in Scientific Data. There, the authors describe principles on how to make data more Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR).

The FAIR principles were created to maximize the reuse of scientific data, to promote best practices on Research Data Management and to enable Open Science.

The FORCE11 website provides an excellent explanation of each of the FAIR principles mean for research data.

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FAIR data practices, such as good documentation, data sharing, and striving to increase reproducibility, have many benefits, such as:

• A citation boost (Colavizza et al., 2020)
• Avoiding disaster through robust workflows (Markowetz, 2015)
• Increased efficiency through reuse of other people’s work

Resources to support researchers to make their research data FAIR are available on the Publish-Cite page of our our website.

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Every researcher can upload up to 5 GB of data per year to 4TU.ResearchData free of charge. For uploads larger than 5 GB we charge a one-off €4.50 per GB. For researchers from partner and member institutions (TU Delft, Eindhoven University of Technology, University of Twente and Wageningen University & Research) we apply special rates and upload volumes which you can find on our Costs page. Learn more on our Publish & Cite, User's webpage.

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Please visit our Policies and Guidelines webpage to access information on our:

• Data Collection Policy
• Deposit Agreement
• Privacy policy
• Cookie policy
• Terms of Use
• Preservation policy
• Deposit guidelines
• Guidelines for creating a README file
• Preferred file formats
• Getting started with DataverseNL
• Metadata review guidelines

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4TU.ResearchData strongly encourages the use of standard, exchangeable or open file formats. For the preferred formats, 4TU.ResearchData guarantees that the research data will remain accessible in the future.

Learn more in our Preferred File Formats guideline.

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Any researcher, from anywhere, can upload their research data to 4TU.ResearchData.

Learn more on our Publish & Cite, User's webpage.

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We recommend data to be "open" whenever possible*. However, you can also embargo the data (delay access for a specified time) or restrict who gets access to data. For more details, please refer to our Access Conditions tab on this webpage.

*Data should be restricted if they are of sensitive nature (e.g. still contain personal information because the data could not be fully anonymised). For guidance, consult the GDPR policy and guidelines of your home institute on how to handle sensitive and personal data.

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4TU.ResearchData strongly encourages the use of standard, exchangeable or open file formats. For the preferred formats, 4TU.ResearchData guarantees that the research data will remain accessible in the future.
Learn more in our Preferred File Formats guideline.

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If you are publishing a paper and need to separately deposit the underlying datasets, you can reserve a DOI in advance to provide to the publisher.

Visit our Manage and Share page to view the Step-by-Step guide under “Reserve a DOI”:

• Go to your “My data” page and click on the “+Create a new item” button.
• Enter the minimal information of metadata which describes the dataset.
• Select “Reserve Digital Object Identifier” at the bottom of the page.
• This will generate a DOI and automatically save the record. This DOI will not resolve until your dataset is peer-reviewed and published

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Reserving a DOI for software has two flavors:

• When you manually upload the software, it works the same as for a dataset
• When you use the git integration, it works the same as for a dataset, provided that you have first imported the snapshot of the code from your git repository.

Reserve a DOI for your software or dataset directly on our website.

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DOIs can be assigned at various levels of granularity. For example, a DOI can be assigned to a data collection, as well as to each item within the data collection. When determining the granularity of a DOI, be sure to consider the level to which you wish to refer in your publications. You should also consider the expectations of other data users. Is the material likely to be cited at a more granular level within each data collection?

Visit our Manage and Share page to view the Step-by-Step guide under “Reserve a DOI”.

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Integrating your 4TU.ResearchData and git account(s) allows you to make public the code associated with a research output, and make clear which version of the code you used.

The 4TU.ResearchData platform has support for the Git protocol. To publish the source code of your software, follow the instructions in the metadata form when choosing Software deposit under the heading Files.

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The step-by-step instructions for uploading your data are described on our Upload your Data webpage.

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The storage where 4TU.ResearchData saves and stores all data is managed by the ICT department of Delft University of Technology. All data is stored in object storage at two locations in Delft and in one location in Leiden.

If corruption takes place "in transit" between the application server and the storage, this is immediately recognized because the file is checked with a hash. If this does not match, the transfer will be done again.

When the file has arrived in our storage environment and is in the 3 locations, we have 3 separate copies. If for any reason 1 copy becomes corrupt, this is detected because the system regularly checks all hashes of the files with each other. In this case ICT will receive a message and the file will be repaired using the other copies.

All dataset owners and visitors can see the md5 check when they have uploaded or view a file from a dataset. For more information, please consult our Data Collection Policy.

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You can find information about preferred file formats on this 1 pager.

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It is not possible to delete files from our storage instantly. Deleted files are stored on the storage for 1 year after a delete action, by the policy of our storage, before they are permanently deleted.

For more information, please consult our Data Collection Policy.

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We promise at least 15 years, and have no plans of pro-actively deleting any of our datasets.

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Contact details for 4TU.ResearchData representatives at each of our member universities as well as the Data Curation and Community Management team members are available on our website. You can also reach us via our email address: researchdata@4tu.nl. One of the team will respond as soon as possible.

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Yes, 4TU.ResearchData collaborates with other partners within Research Data Netherlands and we jointly offer 'Essentials for Data Support' for any aspiring data professionals from the Netherlands and beyond, as well as the massive online open course (MOOC) 'Delivering Research Data Management Services' For an overview of the available training see our Training & Events website.

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The 4TU.ResearchData community is built around our international data repository for science, engineering and design. Our members comprise researchers and research data supporters from different domains of expertise. The community provides an opportunity for its members to connect and exchange knowledge about best practices for the creation and reuse of FAIR data within the technical sciences.

Join our community by creating your public profile and we’ll contact you with a ‘welcome pack’ and an invitation to join our Slack workspace.

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Subscribe for a monthly round-up of news, events, opportunities and announcements from 4TU.ResearchData by providing your email address.

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You can reach us at researchdata@4tu.nl. One of our team members will respond to your query as soon as possible.

Contact details for 4TU.ResearchData representatives at each of our member universities as well as the Data Curation and Community Management team members are available on our website.

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Log in to our repository, select your institution and begin using 4TU.ResearchData’s archiving services.

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The steps of the metadata quality review are described in detail in our Metadata Review Guidelines.

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You are allowed to modify your published dataset. Go to your My data page, locate your record and click on the pencil icon to the far right.

Be aware, modifying the dataset title, authors, or the file(s) associated with the dataset will automatically create a new version of the item and its DOI. Updating any other metadata field (description, categories, keywords, licence, item type, references, funding information, etc.) will not generate a new version.

The original DOI of the published dataset will always take you to the latest version of the item. Versions are listed and accessible in the drop down menu under the item title, each is timestamped.

Learn more on our After Uploading webpage.

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4TU.ResearchData supports all research disciplines within science, engineering and design domains.

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As minimum, you should always cite the DOIs, the authors and the title of the dataset. This ensures that the data which you cite will be appropriately attributed to the authors.

In addition, in every dataset record, you can find an option to 'Cite' data. Clicking on that button will open up the full citation which you can easily select with the Copy button. The citation style is set to 'DataCite' by default but you can select a different one from the drop-down menu.

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