Do you have open research datasets that you would like to share for the benefit of a wider research community, but lack a platform on which to publish them? The Edinburgh International Data Facility now offers a data publishing service that may provide the solution. The Edinburgh International Data Facility (EIDF), operated by EPCC, is committed to making data accessible for research in the public good to improve economic, social and environmental wellbeing. As part of this mission, the EIDF Data Catalogue offers a searchable index of analytics-ready research datasets whose data has been made available in the EIDF data publishing service. EIDF offers the potential to store up to 100s TBs of data per project. The service is free at the point of use up to a generous threshold, after which costs will be incurred. How to apply The application process is lightweight, starting with registration through SAFE, EPCC's service management software, to confirm your identity. Next go to the EIDF portal: https://portal.eidf.ac.uk After logging in to the portal, proceed to “Your project applications” where you can create a new project application to host your data. Your application will be reviewed to ensure that it is suitable. Note that data publishing is free within a threshold but if you use other services provided by EIDF there will be a cost. You must own the copyright to the data or have permission to share it under a suitable licence. The datasets must also be static. The service publishes files only and does not support interactive queries like a database, for example. However users may publish a database dump for other users to upload to their own database. Each project that publishes data will be represented as an "organisation" in the data catalogue. Projects choose the name of the organisation under which their data will be published and can provide a rich description of their dataset in the catalogue. https://catalogue.eidf.ac.uk Data catalogue The data catalogue provides users with the means to make their data discoverable through the choice of suitable metadata. It is based on the open source CKAN application. Once your data has been discovered, the catalogue provides a link to allow others to download this data free of charge from anywhere via an S3-compatible interface. Files can be listed or downloaded in a browser or using an S3 client. Your data will be read-only once it has been published, although there are possibilities for data versioning or publishing increments to your data. We currently have several early adopters helping us streamline the data ingest and publishing process. If you would also like to use this service, please apply through the EIDF portal. If you have any questions, get in touch with the EIDF team at eidf@epcc.ed.ac.uk. Further information EIDF Portal https://portal.eidf.ac.uk EIDF Data Catalogue https://catalogue.eidf.ac.uk About EIDF The Edinburgh International Data Facility (EIDF) is the high-powered analytics and storage service that supports research and data-driven innovation in the Edinburgh and South-East Scotland region and beyond. EIDF is governed by the Data-Driven Innovation initiative – part of the Edinburgh & South East Scotland City Region Deal – with capital investment from the UK Government. DDI: https://ddi.ac.uk/ This article was published on 2024-08-18
