Agile Research Data Management with Open Source: LinkAhead

Research data management (RDM) in academic scientific environments increasingly enters the focus as an important part of good scientific practice and as a topic with big potentials for saving time and money. Nevertheless, there is a shortage of appropriate tools, which fulfill the specific requirements in scientific research. We identified where the requirements in science deviate from other fields and proposed a list of requirements which RDM software should answer to become a viable option. We analyzed a number of currently available technologies and tool categories for matching these requirements and identified areas where no tools can satisfy researchers' needs. Finally we assessed the open-source RDMS (research data management system) LinkAhead for compatibility with the proposed features and found that it fulfills the requirements in the area of semantic, flexible data handling in which other tools show weaknesses.