TI-One: Active Research Data Management in a Modern Philosophy Department

Abstract

When it comes to managing their digital data, researchers are often left to their own devices, with little guidance from their hosting institution. These problems are exacerbated in the humanities, in which each project is seen as a separate world that needs special solutions, leading to data losses and an accumulation of technical debt. This paper presents our vision and progress on TI-One: a department-wide system that guides the management of the data of the whole Thomas-Institut, part of the Philosophy Faculty of the University of Cologne. The novel features of TI-One are 1) a department-wide set of guidelines and conventions, 2) the materialization of live data from non-file sources (e.g., DBs), 3) a versioning system with extended metadata that creates an almost effortless path from automated backups to proper long-term archival of research data.