Deployment of the data donation task¶

This article will discuss the option you have when using the data donation task in a data donation study. The data donation task is designed to be used with Next.

The data donation task with Next¶

Next is a software as a service platform developed by Eyra. As a researcher you can log in to Next and configure data donation study, this means:

Configuring a landing zone for your participants: I.e. a Consent form page, an information page, a privacy policy
Configure a task list for your participants to complete: After the landing zone participants see a list of task they have to complete, typically these tasks are: viewing instruction on how to request and download data from a specific platform and administering the data donation task that you developed using this repository
Configuring where the donated data should be stored. Next has solutions for: AWS, Azure and Yoda.

After configuration participants can be sent to Next with a unique id in the url. This unique key id be used when storing the data, so you know who donated their data

Next as a paid service¶

You can use Next as a paid service provided by Eyra. Please contact Eyra if this is something you are interested in.

Self service Next (community version) on Surf Research Cloud¶

Next is available as an offering on Surf Research Cloud available for Researchers at Dutch universities and universities of applied sciences. This offering on Surf Research Cloud comes with no service or warranties.

Applying for an EINFRA grant¶

In order to use Surf Research Cloud you need credits.

Dutch researchers can get credits on Surf Research Cloud by applying for an EINFRA grant. You can apply for an EINFRA grant here, then:

Click “Straight to the request portal”.
Under “Apply for access” click “Small Compute applications (NWO)”
Fill in and submit the form (see the instructions below)

Instructions to fill in the EINFRA grant form¶

Most fields in the form are self explanatory or optional. Here we explain the fields that aren’t self explanatory:

Description

Put here a small description of what you intent to do. Explain that you want to do a data donation study.

Scientific project descrition

Put down the description of your research project, you could copy and paste this from a grant proposal.

Technical project requirements

In this section you need to explain what resources you need. Based on the resources you need you will receive the appropriate amount of credits. This is an example descrition of the technical project requirements for data donation:

We want to do a data donation study using the "Next for data donation" catalog item. This catalog item provisions a workspace running software that we can use to configure a data donation study.
This workspace needs to be available for the duration of our study. The workspaces uses 8 GiB of Memory and uses 2 cores. The workspace needs to be available for <number of weeks you need the server> weeks.
Therefore we need: <number of weeks> * 7 (days) * 24 (hours) * 2 (cores) * 1.1 (10 percent extra) = X core/hours. We would need 50 GiB  of storage. From SURF we do not request assistance with the deployment.

You need to adapt it to your situation. You should realize that if the workspace is provisioned (meaning its “on” or “running”) credits will be deducted. Try to be realistic for the amounts of weeks you need, but take into account unforseen events.

Resources

Research Cloud - HPC Cloud

Research Drive: Do you need storage in Research Drive?

50 GiB

After you received the EINFRA grant¶

You need to contact datadonation.eu they will make the “Next self service” catalog item available to you.

Self service Next (community version)¶

Next is a free and open source tool and you could host it yourself. You can find Next here. You can try it out using Docker, check the tutorial Try out Next with Docker

Which option should I choose?¶

Next as a paid service: If you have research budget; want to be unburdened and get your data donation study done, this is the best option.
Self service community Next on Surf Research Cloud: You are a researcher at a Dutch university with no budget this is the best option. When choosing this option you have to realize that it comes with no service or warranties, you have to know what you are doing.
Self service community Next: If you want to provide Next as a service to your organization.

Add data donation task to your data donation study on Next¶

After you have created your data donation task with this repository, you can use this task directly in Next. You can do this as follows:

In the data donation task run the command npm run release, this creates a zip file named release.zip
In Next when configuring your data donation study, go to work flow and create a new item task list item called data donation task
In the newly created task list item select the release.zip you have just created

Your data donation task list item is configured!

Use the data donation task without Next¶

The data donation task can be adapted so it works with your own bespoke back end. A tutorial on how to do this is might be added in the future.