The conference brought together infrastructure providers, repository experts and research support professionals to reflect on the future value of data and information management in higher education institutes. The discussions offered a useful perspective on a recurring question which also hasa bearing on research data management: how can information systems and services demonstrate their value beyond compliance and storage?
The resulting network of Latvian institutional repositories — DataverseLV — functions in a similar way to DataverseNL. Jetze Touber (Data Station Manager Humanities) represented DANS at a session on data curation, entitled ‘From Data to Value’. For DANS this was an opportunity to show how it moves along with the fast-developing landscape of research data management.
Diana Pilvar of the University of Tartu and the Estonian node of ELIXIR argued that Research Performing Organisations could learn from the corporate sector by treating research data as a strategic asset rather than an administrative burden. This requires more than simply storing data. Sustainable value depends on active preservation, curation and governance, supported by appropriate technical and organisational frameworks. Without these elements in place, valuable research data risk remaining underused or becoming inaccessible over time.
Liise Lehtsalu, consultant for the Research Data Alliance and the Italian National Research Council, highlighted the importance of distinguishing between “hard” and “soft” infrastructure. Hardware, software and computational services form one part of the equation, but standards, policies, workflows and agreements are equally essential for enabling meaningful reuse of research data. For many organisations, one of the key challenges lies in connecting these layers in practice.
An important lesson from this work is the value of combining experimentation with operational practice. The domain-specific DANS Data Stations, also running on the Dataverse software, are fully managed by DANS, and provide an environment in which new approaches, standards and technical developments can be tested in practice. Experiences and improvements can subsequently inform the broader infrastructure landscape, including institutional repository services such as DataverseNL, where DANS provides the shared technical infrastructure while participatingorganisations retain local control and support.
For those working on repository development, governance or support services, the conference underlined a broader point: sustainable reuse depends not on technology alone, but on the alignment between infrastructure, expertise, policy and community practices. As research data landscapes continue to evolve, collaboration between these different layers becomes increasingly important. That’s why national infrastructures such as ODISSEI for the social sciences and Clariah for the humanities are so important, as well as European projects such as FIDELIS & EDEN, building a network of trustworhty digital repositories and stratgies of curation, long-term preservation, and access in Europe.
