The team from University of Debrecen (UD) lead by Judit Fazekas-Paragh asked the question: “How can we increase the visibility of a new institutional data repository in Hungary via EOSC and RDA?” We were well prepared to start this challenging task because UD has created some useful tools for research support libraries and repository managers in Hungary that fit right in the Open Science ecosystem. Thanks to the grant „Optimising (RDA) Open Science Frameworks and Guidelines in the context of EOSC” the UD data repository Adattár was registered in FAIRsharing and re3data.org. We strongly fostered the knowledge about RDA and EOSC in Hungary by translating two RDA recommendations into Hungarian – one of them targeted repository managers and the translation is available within the data repository of UD. The second one calls out to librarians and provides them 23 tips for getting involved with research data management. The translation is uploaded to Hungary’s national open science page.

Issues to address

In Hungary, University of Debrecen has a history in fostering scientific communication and tries to stay involved with new practices. In the past few years, the academic focus shifted to research data management, and the University Library is one of the main contributors of training researchers and keeping them up-to-date regarding the new practices and requirements of research data management, country-wide. In 2020, attaching a research management plan to research grant applications became mandatory in Hungary. Soon a demand has been born for trainings in the topic of RDM. University of Debrecen University and National Library was requested by the national research funding institution, the NRDI Office to organize online trainings for researchers on how to create research data management plans. For continuing the support of researchers, within the above grant, the nationally required research data management plan has been created in the ARGOS tool as well. With this act, Hungary’s nationally mandated data management plan is available in machine readable format. University of Debrecen has also reached out to other Hungarian data repositories, to review their policies and if needed, help them modify it in a way to become RDA-compliant. Luckily, many of them replied that they already follow RDA standards.

Other benefits

As a data repository service was improved, it now provides a FAIR aspect to science. The work of researchers of University of Debrecen became more visible on an international level by adding the data repository to FAIRSharing and re3data.org. It is also beneficial that the institution now has a toolset to provide help for other higher education institutions in the country that intend to open their mindset to FAIR data management. University of Debrecen University and National is committed to support researchers in managing their research data in the future as well.

Looking forward

The team is planning for Adattár to be channeled into the OpenAIRE Graph. With the contribution of the NI4OS-Europe project, actions are taken to add the repository to the EOSC Catalogue and Marketplace as well.