Setting up an online research environment is an important preparation for your research. This allows you to collaborate with colleagues on the same documents without having to send the files by e-mails and without losing track of the latest version of your work.
Recommended storage media:
Hanze UAS has two research environments that are recommended to collaborate in a research project: Research Drive and Sharepoint. For each project, you should request a new project folder and give user rights to your colleagues on this project. It is also possible to restrict the user rights of subfolders (e.g. with sensitive data). Please contact ICT support for help.
The following media should not be used for data storage:
Research Drive is the recommended storage medium for research at Hanze UAS. It can be used to collaborate in a project folder and to store and share research data in a simple and secure way. Research Drive is a cloud service that is developed for researchers specifically. It allows researchers to store large amounts of research data and to access those in an online environment. Files can easily be shared with colleagues, both at Hanze UAS and external collaborators.
Security
The files of your research are stored in a secure way in the Netherlands. Research Drive is compliant with the GDPR and Hanze UAS regulations. Users working at Hanze UAS can easily log in with their Hanze account via single sign on. When working with external partners, it is recommended to activate two-factor authentication manually, especially if you work with sensitive information.
Some research centres have set up a Sharepoint Community to manage research projects. Sharepoint is an alternative to Research Drive and also complies with the requirements from the GDPR and the Hanze UAS guidelines for responsible data management and information security.
An advantage of Sharepoint is that it can be linked to Teams for communication within the project. An other advantage is that the folder after the project is closed can be easily changed into an archive folder in Sharepoint.
A disadvantage is that it is more difficult in Sharepoint than in Research Drive to add external collaborators to the project folder.
Organizing and structuring your data: not the most 'sexy' topics, but they can save you a lot of time and hassle. proper documentation of data is important to:
If you work with many different files, you should create a logical folder structure to be able to locate the files you need. This will also allow you to keep the file names short. The Hanze UAS uses the standard structure below.
Folder structure for project folder:
000-Research Preparation
100-Finances
200-Correspondence
300-Research Implementation
400-Research Data
500-Project Management
600-Reports
700-Publications, presentations, media
800-Work documents
900-Overview archive locations
To collaborate in an efficient way, it's good to give files a clear name, to quickly know what content a file contains. Elements for a good file name are title of the document, creator and version number. You may also add the date, for example YYMMDD.
Version control helps you to track the changes that were made and to even undo these changes. Using version numbers you can easily tell which version is the most current one. This way everyone will work on the same version of the document. It also makes the changes transparent (editing history) and it makes it possible to open older versions of a document.
You can find a useful way of version control below:
Raw data
Doing research it is always important to store the unchanged, raw versions of your data files. We advise you to clarify the file contains raw data by stating this in the file name and to place this file in a special folder for raw data. If you need to make changes to the data, copy the file, change the name and version number and put this in a different folder, such as 'processed data'.
Sharing data via link
The safest method for sharing data and other files is by saving them in a project folder and by sharing the link to the location of the file. It is not advisable to send files by e-mail, because this is not as secure as sharing a link. Even more, by sending a copy of a file, you may loose control of how and by whom the file is read or used.
Also for the purpose of version control, it is important to keep the data files on one location. This way, everyone knows where to find the most recent version of the data and this prevents multiple people working on their private copies of the data.
Sharing large files via SURFfilesender
If you need to send files after all, you should use the tool SURFfilesender. In contrast to the commonly used WeTransfer, SURFfilesender is a secure way to transfer (sensitive) data files. Hanze does not have a license for WeTransfer and therefore there is no guarantee that files are processed in a safe and secure way.
SURFfilesender is a web application that can be used in any browser. The maximum file size that can be sent is 1 TB. If you wish to encrypt the files, the maximum file size that can be sent with SURFfilsender is 2GB. After sending the files, they are available for download by the receiver for two weeks.