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The management of research data throughout its life-cycle is both a key prerequisite for effective data sharing and efficient long-term preservation of data. This article summarizes the data services and the overall approach to data management as currently practiced at ETH-Bibliothek, the main library of ETH Zürich, the largest technical university in Switzerland. The services offered by service providers within ETH Zürich cover the entirety of the data life-cycle. The library provides support regarding conceptual questions, offers training and services concerning data publication and longterm preservation. As research data management continues to play a steadily more prominent part in both the requirements of researchers and funders as well as curricula and good scientific practice, ETH-Bibliothek is establishing close collaborations with researchers, in order to promote a mutual learning process and tackle new challenges.

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Abstract:Research as a digital enterprise has created new, often poorly addressed challenges for the management and curation of research to ensure continuity, transparency, and accountability. There is a common misunderstanding that curation can be considered at a later point in the research cycle or delegated or that it is too burdensome or too expensive due to a lack of efficient tools. This creates a curation gap between research practice and curation needs. We argue that this gap can be narrowed if curators provide attractive support that befits research needs and if researchers consistently manage their work according to generic concepts consistently from the beginning. A rather uniquely long-term case study demonstrates how such concepts have helped to pragmatically implement a research practice intentionally using only minimalist tools for sustained, self-contained archiving since 1989. The paper sketches the concepts underlying three core research activities. (i) handling of research data, (ii) reference management as part of scholarly publishing, and (iii) advancing theories through modelling and simulation. These concepts represent a universally transferable best research practice, while technical details are obviously prone to continuous change. We hope it stimulates researchers to manage research similarly and that curators gain a better understanding of the curation challenges research practice actually faces.