RADAR Software Release (Version 1.6)

All elements that are managed at contract level can now be viewed and managed by administrators conveniently from the RADAR contract dashboard. These include:

• General information and storage volume: Definition of general information on the RADAR contract and adjustment of the maximum available storage volume.
• Administrators: Assignment of the role "administrator" to other RADAR users.
• Workspaces: Set up and manage workspaces as central entry points for researchers who want to archive or publish data with RADAR.
• Branding: Design and individualisation of the RADAR user interface with corporate colour, logo and links.
• Default Metadata: Definition of metadata standard values at contract level that are applied to uploaded datasets (metadata standard values defined at workspace level take precedence).
• Categories: Definition of value lists (e.g. for institutes, chairs or cost centers). Individual values from these lists can be assigned to RADAR workspaces, for example to attribute costs incurred.
• Statistics: Display of the storage volume used in the contract and the number of data sets in the temporary, archive or publication storage.

As far as possible, existing settings and entries (if necessary in abbreviated form) are already displayed on the dashboard.

Since RADAR 1.3, it is possible to integrate the instituion's logo and a link to an institutional website. Instead of the RADAR standard colour (wine red), you can now use your own corporate colour for buttons, icons and links and adapt RADAR further to the corporate design of your institution. As mentioned above, the "Branding" function is available to administrators on the RADAR contract dashboard.

Please note: For an even deeper integration of RADAR into your infrastructures and workflows, you can continue to use the RADAR API and implement a customized user interface. More information

By popular request, RADAR now supports customer-specific DOI prefixes in addition to the RADAR DOI Prefix 10/22000. This allows you to create DOIs for published data records using your institutional DOI prefix, which RADAR then registers with DataCite. This functionality also contributes to the individualization of your institutional RADAR environment.

Please note:

• You can only specify the DOI prefix. The suffix is an ascending integer that is automatically assigned by the RADAR system. You must ensure that there are no collisions when the prefix is used simultaneously by your institution and RADAR.
• You have to authorise RADAR to register DOIs with DataCite using your prefix.
• We regret that we cannot cover the additional costs for your own DOI prefix and the registration of DOIs (either via DataCite membership or for using the DOI service of the TIB Hannover).
• In contrast to the other branding options, you cannot enter the desired DOI prefix yourself via the user interface. This is done by the RADAR team after consultation.

For further information on the procedure and the necessary formalities, also concerning DataCite, please do not hesitate to info [at] radar-service.eu (contact us).

Since Release 1.3, RADAR optionally calculates an MD5 checksum for selected files locally in the browser before uploading. Once the upload is completed, RADAR recalculates the MD5 checksum for the transferred file and compares both checksums to ensure data integrity. While this works efficiently for file sizes up to a few gigabytes, it does not always for very large files due to the calculation in the browser. With RADAR 1.6, you now have the additional option of downloading the MD5 checksum calculated by RADAR after the upload and comparing it with a locally calculated MD5 checksum. If you have uploaded a ZIP- or TAR-archive, you will receive an MD5 checksum for each file it contains.

The tab "Contents", which lists all files and folders of a data set, now contains a new column "Metadata". It provides an overview over the metadata assigned to elements in a data set and the level at which metadata has been entered.

In order to simplify importing citations of data sets published in RADAR into a reference management software, RADAR now offers an export function. RADAR currently supports the following formats: BibTeX, EndNote, RIS, DataCite and OAI-DC.

We hope that the new functions improve your experience with RADAR. For any questions regarding the new software release, please contact us at info [at] radar-service.eu (info[at]radar-service[dot]eu).