Exploring the Canadian Federated Research Data Repository Service

Abstract

Good data management requires support for researchers at all stages of the data lifecycle, from policy and planning development to infrastructure that ensures data is findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable (FAIR). While several excellent institutional, domain-specific, and general repositories currently exist both within Canada and abroad, Canada lacks nationally coordinated solutions for managing research data, and the question of where to deposit data for discovery, reuse, and preservation remains pervasive. Developed through a partnership between the Canadian Association of Research Libraries (CARL), the Portage Network, and Compute Canada, the Federated Research Data Repository (FRDR) seeks to address a longstanding gap in Canada’s research infrastructure by providing a single platform from which research data can be ingested, curated, preserved, discovered, cited, and shared. The platform’s federated search tool will provide a focal point to discover and access Canadian research data, while the range of services provided by FRDR will help researchers store and manage their data, preserve their research for future use, and comply with institutional and funding agency data management requirements. In this presentation, participants will learn about the development of the new system, current and planned functionality, the timeline for service launch, the proposed distributed service model to support institutions both locally and nationally, and a brief overview of research projects we will be supporting as the platform moves toward launch. Researchers will gain an understanding of how they can use FRDR to make their research data discoverable and accessible, as well as comply with increasing funder expectations for the management of research data.