Jacco Koekkoek works as an analyst and coordinator in the Faculty of Science’s Environment and Health laboratory at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam). Together with his colleagues, he was forced to work a lot from home in recent times. The IT for Research team has set up a special environment for laboratory analysts to continue their work on important projects remotely. About 10-15% of the work needs to be done in the lab. The analysis work can also be done at home, partly thanks to the assistance that IT has provided.
Meet Désirée Oldenhuis, data security specialist at VU Amsterdam
On 1 April, Désirée Oldenhuis took up her post as a data security specialist in the Research Data Support programme. Désirée's role is to provide a good overview of security within an IT landscape to support researchers. ‘My job is making me think about data security in a new and more constructive way. I have to approach things differently.’
An interdisciplinary COVID-19 research response team is emerging at the VU. The goal of the team is to bring together the expertise available at the university so that the team can succeed in helping researchers perform high-quality research on COVID-19-related topics. VU employees supporting research projects on COVID-19 can join this new network.
The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU), the Dutch Federation of University Medical Centres (NFU), NWO and Elsevier have partnered on open access and open science . The agreement means that 95% of all Dutch scientific articles are made open access immediately. Publications by Dutch scientists are made available full text in an Open Knowledge Base.
For VU Amsterdam, this cooperation is an important step. Rector Magnificus Vinod Subramaniam: "VU aims for Open Science as a future of science and as an essential part of the VU strategy. This agreement contributes to this goal."
Behind the scenes at the VU Research Data Support programme
We aim to make it easier for researchers to store, share, archive, publish and reuse their research data. The help comes in the form of tools, infrastructure, advice and services for the effective and secure management of research data.
To inform researchers on the support that the programme is working on we publish this regular update on the most important progress achieved so far. In this edition:
Our digital introduction campaign started
Research Drive for storing and sharing large amounts of date will go live soon
Easy way to create data management plans with DMPonline gets even better
RDM support desk launches interactive service portal
