RADAR

Research often takes place in temporary projects. What is and remains accessible are usually the results summarized in publications. Their traceability and reproducibility as well as the possibility to edit them in new research contexts require access to the underlying data.

RADAR offers researchers on publicly funded universities and non-academic research institutions in Germany a customized, cost-efficient and user-friendly repository for the archival and publication of research data. With RADAR, project data can be managed easily via the web, indexed with metadata, permanently stored, and published as desired. RADAR focuses on subjects in which subject-specific research data management solutions do not yet exist. RADAR offers two interrelated ways of permanently storing research data:

• The archival of data serves to securely store data (e.g., within the scope of good scientific practice). Researchers can define and modify a storage period and access rights (private, shared, public).
• The archival of data combined with the publication of data has an unlimited storage period (at least 25 years). Published datasets are always assigned a DOI via DataCite and can thus be internationally identified and cited.

RADAR is operated exclusively on servers in Germany. All contracts are subject to German law. And, of course, RADAR complies with the GDPR.

Once they have concluded an agreement with FIZ Karlsruhe, the institutions using RADAR will be sole responsible for managing the RADAR work environment and for finally curating the research data.

Institutions can create separate work environments for their researchers where they can manage their data for archival or publication, index them with metadata and assign them a suitable license.  If necessary, they can easily grant external reviewers access to the data prior to publication within the scope of a peer-review procedure. Other features such as delegated assignment of rights and roles, branding options, extensive statistics, and configurable usage limits for cost control are also available.
RADAR users may not only use the interface available on the web but also a programming interface (API). This enables institutions using RADAR to integrate the service into their own offers and workflows.

Institutions can choose between three variants of RADAR - RADAR Cloud, RADAR Hybrid or RADAR Local –, depending on their particular needs, technical resources, and desired level of integration.  

RADAR Cloud, a "software as a service" solution, provides an entire research data repository hosted by FIZ Karlsruhe on a secure cloud platform. The data are stored in three copies at different locations in the data processing centers of Scientific Centre for Computing (SCC) of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and at Zentrum für Informationsdienste und Hochleistungsrechnen (ZIH) of TU Dresden.

Institutions using RADAR Hybrid can store their research data in their own archive by means of the hosted RADAR software. Both the local data processing center or an external storage service can be integrated into RADAR as an alternative storage infrastructure.
 
With RADAR Local, FIZ Karlsruhe operates the RADAR software on behalf of the using institution on the institution’s local IT infrastructure and only using the institution’s own storage systems. In this case, the using institution itself acts as the service provider and offers RADAR under its own domain.

Each variant is subject to a different service agreement including a transparent pricing model.

FIZ Karlsruhe as a player in the NFDI (National Research Data Infrastructure) offers scientific communities powerful services to easily publish research data:

• RADAR4Chem for the chemistry community (as part of NFDI4Chem)
• RADAR4Culture for communities in the field of cultural heritage (architecture, art, music, theater, dance, film, and media studies), as part of NFDI4Culture

These RADAR offerings are based on the generic RADAR repository and complement the existing portfolio of specialist repositories in these scienctific communities. Researchers in these disciplines can use the new RADAR offerings free of charge and regardless of their institutional affiliation.

We would be pleased to talk to other NFDI consortia who are interested in comparable publication services!

• RADAR Features
• RADAR Agreements & Prices
• RADAR Support
• How to test RADAR
• RADAR4Chem
• RADAR4Culture
• Direct to RADAR