Loughborough University partners with Figshare, Symplectic and Arkivum to create UK’s first integrated research data management solution

Today Loughborough University, one of the UK’s leading universities, announce a joint venture to deliver an integrated solution for their research data management.

Digital Science’s portfolio companies Figshare and Symplectic, alongside Arkivum, the provider of large scale, long-term, and guaranteed digital archiving solutions, will be working in partnership to deliver this pioneering solution to the University.

With impending funder guidelines set to come into effect, UK institutions are having to take measures to ensure their research data is stored securely and persistently, with appropriate metadata and made freely accessible on the internet.

Loughborough University’s solution will enable staff, students and researchers to meet funding-body requirements for open access to data while providing a secure, long-term space for a wide range of content; all on a platform that encourages collaboration. The solution will also allow for the easy citation and re-use of their digital data by making it discoverable, citable and shareable from anywhere.

This innovative integrated solution meets the key requirements set out by Loughborough University; the lowering of operating costs; the provision of a highly reliable service from suppliers with established reputations in the UK, and compliance with RCUK funding guidelines and UK legal requirements. The solution will support the storage of primary data generated during original research projects, alongside derived and summarised data used to support publications.

Peter Townsend, Director of the Research Office comments,

“The future of our research data is of huge importance to Loughborough University. Loughborough were looking for a solution that didn’t just deliver minimum levels of compliance, but also provided a highly visible showcase for the top quality research carried out at the University. The service that we have commissioned from our new partners is highly innovative, and will place Loughborough at the very forefront of developments in Research Data Management. We made a critical decision to implement a solution which not only gives us the flexibility to access and manage our active data, but also the long term archiving of valuable datasets. Getting our strategy right today, means that we’ll see benefits across our research sooner and it will be preserved for the future.”

Nik Stanbridge, VP of Product Marketing at Arkivum adds:

“In delivering this solution, Arkivum, Figshare and Symplectic have demonstrated their commitment to providing a managed service to Loughborough University that provides compliance, data access and integrity. Working closely with Loughborough University’s research data management programme, we know that we are giving their students and staff easy access to securely archived data.”

This is the UK’s first integrated research data management solution, and will certainly not be the last. We’d like to extend our congratulations to all of those involved.