Data Manager: A data management solution for the life sciences

Effective research data management is fundamental to ensure the integrity and reproducibility of scientific research. We present the Tübingen Data Manager application, a FOSS that not only stores data of the plethora of omics technologies alongside its associated metadata, but also enables sharing and re-use of the data towards a FAIR and Open Data future. The Data Manager application was developed at QBiC, one of the main core facilities of the University of Tübingen, in close collaboration with domain experts (life science) and research software engineers to support users throughout the research data lifecycle. It provides an integrated environment that spans from the Data Management Plan to the publication of research outputs, capturing general project metadata, experimental design, raw data acquisition, and downstream analysis. The Data Manager provides researchers with flexible data-sharing capabilities while ensuring guidance through step-by-step documentation at every stage of the data lifecycle. To enhance data provenance tracking and interoperability, the application integrates ORCID and ROR, as well as many ontologies via the TIB terminology service. By integrating comprehensive scientific project management functionalities, our solution not only facilitates the reproducibility of analysis but also ensures the transparency and reusability of the applied analytical workflows and research outcomes.