Open Science Services at ZALF

The  Leibniz Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF) is a non-university research institution with about 145 scientists among ca. 380 employees in total that work in six institutes at three locations. Environmental planning of agricultural landscapes, land use change and potential conflicts with effects on the society are explored. The service departments central library with publication management, data management department, central computer network as well as the research station and central laboratory support scientists in providing relevant information, assist with central data acquisition and building the virtual research environment. Research is characterised by applied and interdisciplinary topics, collaborations within ZALF and with other institutions and production of experimental and modelled data, for example in long term field experiments.

Open Science at ZALF could facilitate collaboration between research groups both within ZALF and with other institutions. Less bureaucracy with data sharing agreements and the usage of new publication types such as online collaborative writing tools makes an exchange of information faster.

As it is common in other research facilities, scientists at ZALF are highly mobile. To avoid data loss or complications during staff exchange, it is important to discover all relevant quality-controlled research output produced at ZALF and to take care of their long-term storage and availability. The research cycle of planning, finding, creating and storing, publishing and reusing information needs to be secured by the collaboration of central infrastructure units (Schmitt & Rumler, 2015)