Long-Term Repositories—Maintaining Research Databases for Interdisciplinary Projects

This paper describes the maintenance and modernisation of custom data repositories that have supported three long-term research projects since their launch in 2007. It highlights an almost complete rewrite of the code base in 2020 and 2021. To enable research data management (RDM) that adheres to modern and FAIR standards, many features were rebuilt and streamlined for ease of use, with the goal of reducing the friction involved in RDM as much as possible. The update significantly improved the file upload by switching to a fully browser-based solution and completely overhauled the outdated metadata editor with a more interactive version. The ability to search for and find data in the repository has also been enhanced by switching to a flexible, filter-based solution which displays results in real time. It shows that older repositories can be kept in line with the changing landscape of RDM, ensuring that the research data contained therein is not lost. Through these updates and continuing maintenance, these data repositories have stayed available for almost 20 years, even after project funding has ended.