Heidelberg University

  • | mise à jour le 24/04/2025

April 2025 – Link to the French version

Your institution

Founded in 1386, Heidelberg University is Germany’s oldest university and today ranks among Europe’s leading research institutions with an international reputation. As a comprehensive university with 13 faculties, it covers a broad spectrum of disciplines. Heidelberg University has approximately 31,000 students and nearly 7,000 researchers. It is part of the German Excellence Strategy and currently hosts two Clusters of Excellence, along with 29 Collaborative Research Centers, 41 ERC Grants, and numerous other third-party funded projects.

Since when has your service been supporting data management? How was your service structured?

Systematic, campus-wide research data management (RDM) services have been in place at Heidelberg University since 2014. That year, the university adopted a Research Data Policy, establishing key guidelines for data management across all research projects. At the same time, the University Library and the University’s Computing Centre launched a joint service unit, the Competence Centre for Research Data, to provide RDM support and services. This early initiative positioned Heidelberg University as one of the frontrunners among German universities in institutionalizing research data management structures.

In 2023, the Competence Centre was restructured into a new organizational unit, the Research Data Unit (RDU), as part of a university-wide strategy to strengthen research data management. 

How do you support researchers?

The Research Data Unit (RDU) offers comprehensive support throughout the entire research data lifecycle, structured into four main service areas:

In addition, the RDU’s operating institutions, the University Computing Centre and the University Library, as well as other service facilities on campus offer additional data management services.

The RDM service catalog on the website comprehensively lists available services such as the institutional data repository heiDATA and the electronic lab notebook eLabFTW.

How is data management support organized in your institution?

The Research Data Unit (RDU) is guided by a Steering Board and supported by a Committee for Sensitive Research Data.

  • The Steering Board provides strategic direction and consists of representatives from Heidelberg University’s four Fields of Focus (FoF), along with the directors of the University Library and the University Computing Centre.
  • The Committee for Sensitive Research Data advises the RDU on handling sensitive data and related data protection issues.

The RDU is responsible for maintaining and developing local services and infrastructures for research data management, including administration, publication, and long-term archiving. It also provides training and advisory services and serves as a key interface to regional, national (e.g., NFDI), and international RDM infrastructures.

In addition to this centralized unit, an increasing number of decentralized data stewards shall be introduced to act as key liaisons between researchers and central infrastructure providers. The RDU provides support for the decentralized personnel in the form of counseling, teaching and networking.

Present a particularly important action for your institution’s data management support

An important milestone in advancing research data management at Heidelberg University was the strategic development process initiated in 2021 and completed in 2023. After nearly a decade of systematic RDM efforts, this university-wide initiative provided an opportunity to evaluate and further develop existing structures comprehensively.

This process was coordinated by the University’s Research and Strategy Committee, ensuring that both the diverse needs of different disciplines and a strategic institutional perspective were considered.

Key outcomes of this initiative include:

  • The restructuring of the Research Data Unit, enabling the enhancement of existing offering and the introduction of new services, such as
    • centrally hosted Electronic Lab Notebook, 
    • a new GitLab infrastructure,
    • an OMERO microscopy repository.
  • The establishment of a task force for handling personal data in medical research, which significantly improved the legally compliant processing of medical research data on university IT systems.
  • The development of a new governance structure, ensuring a research-led, future-oriented approach to research data management at the university.