ZHAW Services Research Data Services team offers advice, training, and direct support to ZHAW members for specific challenges in research data management. This includes assistance with data management planning, utilisation of specific tools or programming languages, addressing technical and legal aspects (e.g., data anonymisation or encryption), as well as guidance on data publication and archiving.

Since 2023, the ZHAW Services Research Data team has been additionally supported by researchers from various departments. This support is part of the project DSembedded; Integrating discipline-specific Know-How into Data Stewardship, which is co-funded by swissuniversities. Researchers with proven experience in RDM are engaged in support activities. In this role, they identify new trends and impulses in their research fields and adjacent disciplines that lead to implications and demands on RDM. Furthermore, they provide support, upon request, for data management or other data-specific processes of research projects. The aim of this two-year pilot project is to customize the services as much as possible to the individual and discipline-specific needs of researchers and to develop customised solutions. Additionally, it aims to promote best practices in research data handling and integrate them sustainably into everyday research practices.

RDM aims to systematically organise, secure, and document scientific data throughout its entire lifecycle—from collection to archiving. This promotes transparency, reproducibility, and trust in research results. Additionally, it serves as a foundation for public sharing (Open Research Data) and the reuse of data for further analyses, as reference data, or for simulations and AI training.

In the course of the discussion surrounding Open Science, the topic of Open Research Data has also gained increasing importance. ZHAW is dedicated to promoting open science and open innovation through its R&D policy. Consequently, researchers are expected to make the data collected in their research projects publicly accessible whenever it is technically, legally, and ethically feasible. This principle is increasingly advocated by foundations and public funders and formulated as a condition for project funding, while also financially supported: for instance, the Swiss National Science Foundation covers costs of up to CHF 10,000 for the preparation and publication of datasets. Open Research Data is established to varying degrees in different disciplines. In disciplines such as bioinformatics, genomics, climate and geosciences, or public health, solid ecosystems of publicly accessible data have already been formed, providing significant value to the research communities.