Services

The Q02 project operates a network of RDM-related services supporting the TRR379. They are described in more detail in the following sections.

graph TB;
    subgraph Central services
        C1[("Collaboration portal<br>hub.trr379.de<br> 🔐")]
        C2{{"Cohort search<br>nb-query.trr379.de<br> 🔐"}}
        C3(Main website<br>www.trr379.de)
        C4("Data catalog<br>data.trr379.de")
        C5[("Knowledge pool<br>pool.trr379.de<br> 🔐")]
        C6("Documentation<br>docs.trr379.de")
        C7("Data models<br>concepts.trr379.de")
    end
    U1(("General Public"))
    U2(("TRR379 member"))
    C1 --> C3
    C1 --> C6
    C1 --> C7
    C1 --> U2
    C2 --> U2
    C3 --> U1
    C4 --> U1
    C5 --> C1
    C5 --> C2
    C5 --> C4
    C5 --> C3
    C5 --> U1
    C5 --> U2
    C6 --> U2
    C7 --> C5
    U2 --> C1
    U2 --> C5

Subsections of Services

Service status monitor

The website status.trr379.de provides a central monitor for TRR379 services. In case of an outage (or a suspected outage), this site can be used to look for already known issues, or to report new ones.

Service outages and recoveries are also available as push notifications. Contact trr379@lists.fz-juelich.de to get access. A notification is pushed when a service failure is detected for more than two consecutive tests (typically a 10min interval).

Main website

This is the main website of the TRR379.

This website is not just a public-facing view on the consortium. It is specifically built to be the core component of the metadata concept of TRR379. It provides a collection of canonical definitions of entities essential for the function of TRR379. Such entities include

  • projects of the TRR
  • contributors to the TRR
  • publication from the TRR membership
  • site of the consortium
  • …

Semantics

Any such entity has a dedicated page on the website, with a stable URL that serves as a URI for that entity. As such, these URLs can be used in any TRR379-related metadata to declare relationships to TRR379 entities, for example, the authorship of a publication, the origin project of a data release, etc.

The website is built with the static site generator Hugo. It capitalized on its taxonomy feature. Any page on the site is built from a metadata record. For Hugo, this metadata is presented in the form of a page’s front matter. However, these metadata may themselves be generated from the result of a database query.

Here is an example record for TRR379 spokesperson Ute Habel:

title: Ute Habel
projects:
- a02
- a04
- q01
- q04
sites:
- Aachen
- Juelich
roles:
- pi
- spokesperson
layout: contributor
params:
  orcid:  0000-0003-0703-7722
  name-title: Prof. Dr. rer. soc.
  affiliation: Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, Faculty of Medicine, RWTH Aachen University
  sortkey: "Habel, Ute"

<additional content on the page's subject>

From this information, the page that identifies and describes Ute Habel as a spokesperson is generated. It also links and references her record on the respective pages for projects, sites, and roles she is associated with. Consequently, the URL https://www.trr379.de/contributors/ute-habel/ can serve as a URI for Ute Habel within the TRR379 metadata. Moreover, ute-habel is a unique identifier for her as a contributor to TRR379.

While other special-purpose identification systems exist (e.g., https://orcid.org for academics), this approach is automatically applicable to any concept and entity relevant to TRR379. Including roles, data acquisition methods, instruments, etc. The domain root trr379.de represents a unique namespace to define and reference any required entities. This enables a timely and unencumbered development of a metadata concept for TRR379, without hindering alignment with and mapping to more global efforts and initiatives.

Look

Structured metadata is rendered to an HTML website with Hugo using a template. This approach separates the information from its presentation.

The look of the website can be altered by adjusting the template, or switching to a different template entirely. This requires familiarity with Hugo and its templating mechanism.

At present, the congo template is used.

Collaboration platform

https://hub.trr379.de is the central (data) collaboration site of the consortium. It runs an enhanced variant of the Forgejo software that is designed for maximum interoperability with the RDM solution DataLad.

The main difference to the Gitlab solution – that is also employed by TRR379 for internal purposes – is the ability to also host arbitrarily large data on the same site. The integration with the git-annex software makes it ideal for the federated, multi-site nature of TRR379. The full software-stack is free and open source software, and can be deployed at any collaborating site with minimal effort. This aspect is essential for supporting the decentralized RDM approach of the TRR.

Any contributor can have an account on the central hub. Please contact Michael Hanke to get set up.

Calendars

TRR379 uses a dedicated CalDAV server at https://cal.trr379.de. This service can be used to host any number of online calendars. Individual calendars can be configured to be publicly accessible, or only for internal (authenticated) consumption.

Internal calendars

Any number of non-public calendars can be created and shared with specific audiences. This can be useful to coordinate data acquisition sessions, organize room bookings, or schedule slots for internal meetings and events.

Contact the management team to request a dedicated calendar.

Public calendars

All public calenders are available via CalDAV URL and can be included in any calendar solution, such as Google calendar.

The URLs follow the pattern https://cal.trr379.de/public/<name>, where <name> is the calendar name, as stated in the list below. For the events calendar this is https://cal.trr379.de/public/events.

For use with Google calendar, replace https:// with webcal://. For example, the events calendar can be added to Google calender with the URL webcal://cal.trr379.de/public/events.

Available public calendars:

  • events: General TRR379 events [preview]

Data catalog

https://data.trr379.de hosts the data catalog of the TTR379. This site is currently work in progress, and will be published once the project has started to accumulate data.

A data catalog is a website that displays and organises information that you provide about your collected datasets. The purpose of a catalog is to make data more FAIR, specifcally more findable, even if they are access restricted. The catalog further encourages collaboration between partner sites. If all partners share a common data catalog which showcases their respective collected datasets, partners can more easily engage in potential collaborations with each other as they can see what data has already been collected at each site.

The data catalog only makes metadata (i.e. descriptive fields about your dataset) openly available, there is no need to make the actual data file content publicly accessible. In other words, you do not need to upload sensitive data (or publicly available data, for that matter) anywhere in order for the dataset to be part of the catalog, just metadata. Providing full access to a dataset, or merely to a limited description about a dataset is entirely within your control. If a partner wishes to pursue a collaboration regarding a certain dataset, that partner will still need to follow the existing institutional routes of requesting access to your dataset. You have FULL control over what information is displayed in the catalog, and if you want the data files to be publicly accessible or not.

Catalog sources follow a specific design and structure.

The main source of metadata for the data catalog is the DataLad dataset at ./data, also referred to as the catalog superdataset or the catalog homepage dataset.

The idea is that this superdataset acts as a container for the metadata of all new datasets that should be represented in the catalog.

In a typical catalog source repository, you will find the following structure:

./catalog - this is where the data catalog sources live - the live catalog site serves this directory

./code - this directory contains scripts that are used for catalog updates

./data - this is a DataLad subdataset of the current data-catalog dataset/repo - its origin is at: abcd-j/data - it functions as the superdataset for all datasets rendered in the catalog, i.e. it is the homepage of the catalog

./docs - documentation sources - contains documentation for catalog users and contributors

./inputs - input files used during catalog creation, updates, and testing

Knowledge pooling tool

The knowledge pooling tool is a system used for aggregating information on research progress and outputs across TRR379 partner sites and projects. It comprises a web UI for manually submitting, editing, and browsing information, and an API for programmatic submission and retrieval.

The current (generation v0) tool can be accessed at:

For technical information on the knowledge pooling tool and its data and privacy policy, visit:

For information on using the knowledge pooling tool, see the Use the knowledge pooling tool How to pages.

Cohort data discovery

https://nb-query.trr379.de hosts the central NeuroBagel query interface of the TRR379. With this solution, data availability can be queried dynamically, to faciliate data access requests.

NeuroBagel supports federated queries and is therefore ideally suited for the decentralized research data management approach of TRR379.

Data models

https://concepts.trr379.de hosts resources and documentation on the metadata models driving the research data management procedures of TRR379.

Documentation

https://docs.trr379.de (this site) is the main documentation source for the TRR379. It offers information on facilities and procedures.