Software

RDMO is implemented as a web application. It is available as open-source software on github.com. Our main use case is the collaborative collecting, editing and maintenance of all necessary information for a sustainable data management. This is done along the notion of projects, which will be defined by the users for their particular context.

The main functionality of RDMO includes the following features:

Input

The input of all information about a project is collected via a structured interview using an interactive web interface. This includes the following functions:

  • Collaborative work of the different Stakeholders
  • Skipping of redundant questions based on the given answers
  • Display of progress of the given input
  • Different widgets (rulers, check boxes, drop-down lists)
  • Use of a controlled vocabulary for answering choices
  • Upload of documents (e.g. meta data documentation, codebooks, etc.)
  • Freezing the state of all project information at times using snapshots

Output

The information can be retrieved in several ways:

  • Aggregation of the given information into textual views (e.g. structured for data management plans to be used in proposals for Horizon 2020, DFG)
  • Time line of all tasks to be done regarding data management
  • Interfaces to external services or data models

Setup and operation

We pay special attention to making RDMO easily installable and customisable, so that institutions like research institutes, libraries and universities can adapt it for their work. This includes:

  • Complete customisation of the user interface
    • Corporate design
    • Layout
  • Complete customisation of the content
    • Questions and answering options
    • Help texts, including links to external sources
    • Templates for textual data management plans
    • Tasks to be done
  • Integration into the local infrastructure
    • Authorisation and authentication
    • APIs

Development

For the further development of RDMO, we use a roadmap process in which the existing issues on GitHub are prioritised by the community. In 2022, a large number of issues were prioritised into critical, high, medium and low in two community meetings. The best way to view the individual lists is on GitHub, under these links:

To transparently communicate the status of the work in progress, we use the “Projects” functionality of GitHub, where the individual issues are displayed on a Kanban board:

https://github.com/orgs/rdmorganiser/projects/1

New feature requests, bug reports or security issues are best suggested or reported via GitHub Issue:

https://github.com/rdmorganiser/rdmo/issues/new/choose

Of course, we also accept requests via all other communication channels.