$2.7M available to support development of software tools that support best practices in research data management

[Ottawa, ON]

CANARIE, a vital component of Canada’s digital infrastructure supporting research, education and innovation, today announced a call for proposals for development of software tools to support a strong research data management (RDM) ecosystem in Canada.

The call for proposals supports the development of RDM software that encourages the adoption of RDM best practices, specifically the FAIR Principles, which state that research data should be Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable. The tools developed through this call are intended to enable compliance with evolving policy guidelines and international data management standards.

Research data management in Canada is evolving. While some elements that support RDM have been developed, there are still significant gaps in the ecosystem. CANARIE conducted a community consultation to identify these gaps and priority areas for software development. The community’s responses were assessed by CANARIE’s Research Data Management Advisory Committee and eight themes were identified as priority areas for the development of software tools (more detail on these areas may be found in call documents):

• Enriching (Meta)Data and Discovery
• Federated Repositories/Interoperability
• Domain-specific Repositories
• Data Deposit and Curation
• Preservation
• Persistent IDs/Citability
• Data Access and Analytics
• Data Privacy and Security

This call focuses on projects that respond to gaps in these theme areas.

“Effective research data management is critical for the collaborative and multidisciplinary research needed to create new knowledge that drives innovation,” says Dr. David Castle, Vice President, Research at the University of Victoria and a member of the CANARIE Board of Directors and Research Data Management Advisory Committee. “We thank the community for helping to identify areas in the RDM ecosystem that can be strengthened through the development of new software tools.”

This call for proposals closes on June 20th. More detailed information on the call, including scoring criteria, FAQs and supporting documents may be found here. Additionally, interested participants are invited to attend an informational webinar to discuss and ask questions about the call. Participants may register for the webinar of their choice by using the links below:

• May 16^th, 2018 13:00 Eastern Time | Register here: canarie.ca/rdm-call-webinar-1
• May 17^th, 2018 13:00 Eastern Time | Register here: canarie.ca/rdm-call-webinar-2

For more information, contact:

Ela Yazdani
Director, Communications
CANARIE
[email protected] | 613-943-5432

About CANARIE

CANARIE strengthens Canadian leadership in science and technology by delivering digital infrastructure to support world-class research that directly benefits all Canadians.

CANARIE and its twelve provincial and territorial partners form Canada’s National Research and Education Network. This ultra-high-speed network connects Canada’s researchers, educators and innovators to each other and to global data, technology, and colleagues.

Beyond the network, CANARIE funds and promotes reusable research software tools and national research data management initiatives to accelerate discovery, provides identity management services to the academic community, and offers advanced networking and cloud resources to boost commercialization in Canada’s technology sector.

Established in 1993, CANARIE is a non-profit corporation, with the majority of its funding provided by the Government of Canada.

For more information, please visit: www.canarie.ca.