Review of the day Gérer ses données sur le plateau de Saclay
On February 11, 2025, the Institut Polytechnique de Paris hosted the "Managing Your Data Day on the Plateau-de-Saclay", co-organized by the Institut Polytechnique de Paris documentation services network, the Paris-Saclay University Libraries, Information and Open Science Department, and the Ecole Polytechnique's IDCS service unit.
The event brought together some 60 data professionals (engineers, researchers, librarians, research support staff) with the aim of identifying the data management issues and challenges facing scientific communities and the solutions implemented by the services and infrastructures of the Saclay campus.
An ecosystem conducive to supporting scientific communities
The day, introduced by Kees van der Beek, Vice President of Research at the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, and Etienne Augé, Deputy Vice President of Open Science at the University of Paris-Saclay, began with a presentation on national policy regarding support for research data management, using the example of the Recherche Data Gouv ecosystem.
This was followed by feedback from various scientific communities, particularly in biology, climate sciences, and space sciences, which highlighted the importance of infrastructure in supporting research data management. While one of the major challenges is to cope with the exponential growth in data production, the infrastructures presented demonstrated the key role they play in ensuring data quality, implementing secure data sharing and access conditions, and offering a range of data processing and visualization services, all thanks to the expertise developed within the teams. The CoreTrustSeal label, obtained by IDOC and ESPRI, attests to the quality of the services offered to users in accordance with the principles of open science, while CASD has established itself as a trusted service providing scientists with access to sensitive data.
The last part of the day gave the floor to research support services, in particular documentation services and mesocenters, which also assist scientists in managing research data. The DatASaclay workshop at Paris-Saclay University has been awarded the Data Workshop label for the support it offers to scientific communities, while continuing to expand its services (storage space for intermediate data, electronic laboratory notebook solution, flash training courses). At the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, the documentation services network and the mesocenter are working to structure and network their services and skills in order to offer additional support to research teams within their scope.
Avenues for collaboration within the Paris-Saclay cluster ecosystem
The presentations and discussions provided food for thought for the various institutions and organizations on the Plateau-de-Saclay regarding the strategy to be implemented to ensure high-quality services and meet the challenges of research data sharing.
One of the main themes of the day was to consider networking the plateau's services and infrastructure in order to address the challenges of visibility for these structures and promote collaboration across the region. While the "Centre de Calcul et de Données du Plateau-de-Saclay (CCDPS)" certification project is a concrete example of the collaboration between Paris-Saclay University, the CNRS, and the Institut Polytechnique de Paris, other avenues for collaboration were also discussed, such as sharing information and best practices between services, joint support for jointly supervised structures, and the organization of other events on issues raised by research data. These avenues remain to be explored in order to provide optimal support for our scientific communities.