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Service Description

Introduction#

Purpose of this document#

This document outlines the EUDAT CDI B2SHARE service, including its service level and the roles and responsibilities of the involved parties. The EUDAT CDI B2SHARE service is owned by EUDAT Ltd. and provided by CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd.

More information on the related EUDAT B2SHARE Premium service is available in the EUDAT B2SHARE Premium Service Description.

Terminology and definitions#

  • Service: EUDAT CDI B2SHARE service as described by this document.
  • End user: A natural person using the service described in this document. The end user can belong to Communities, and can be affiliated to Customer organisations.
  • Different end-user roles are described in the Community Agreement
  • Customer: A legal entity, i.e., the customer organisation of a contract-based paid B2SHARE Premium service.
  • Community:
    • A B2SHARE community means a research community with a common shared purpose or context in the scientific research process. A community can consist of a research infrastructure, a university or department, a research institute, or some other national or international research organization. Community has responsibilities as described in B2SHARE Community Agreement.
  • Service Provider: The organisation providing the service directly to a Customer, or on behalf of EUDAT Ltd., in the case of this service, CSC – IT Center for Science Ltd.
  • Record: Datasets are called records in B2SHARE - it is a published metadata entry, which can include data files, and is identified by a persistent identifier.
  • Dataset: see Record

Service description#

Purpose of the Service#

B2SHARE is a user-friendly, reliable, and trustworthy way for researchers, scientific communities and citizen scientists to store, publish, and share research data in a FAIR way. B2SHARE is a solution that facilitates research data storage, guarantees long-term persistence of data and allows data, results or ideas to be shared worldwide. B2SHARE supports community domains with metadata extensions, access rules and publishing workflows.

B2SHARE is part of the broader EUDAT service offering and enables integrations with other services. It supports the FAIR principles, for example, by granting DOI identifiers, facilitating identity federation through B2ACCESS or national solutions such as Finnish Haka Federation, supporting data transfer from B2DROP services, improving metadata interoperability, and increasing visibility through B2FIND and OpenAIRE Explorer.

EUDAT CDI B2SHARE is a free service open to all researchers and communities, while EUDAT B2SHARE Premium services are tailored to the needs of customer organizations and communities on a contract-by-contract basis. Tailoring may include customization of metadata models, storage capacity, and access rights. Some tailoring of the free EUDAT CDI B2SHARE is possible in a funded RDI project collaboration. More information on EUDAT B2SHARE Premium service is available in the EUDAT B2SHARE Premium Service Description.

Intended users#

B2SHARE serves several stakeholders: - Researchers and other data producers for depositing, publishing and sharing their datasets, and indicating connections to other research outputs and the merit of their work - Researchers discovering existing data for reuse, analysis, publication reference, and planning projects and collaboration - Data managers and curators in research institutions, research infrastructures and other communities managing their collective data - Research administration and funding decision makers for source of current research information, overviews and statistics

Service Features#

The service documentation can be accessed at: https://docs.eudat.eu/b2share/overview/

The service provision includes technical infrastructure, data center services, B2SHARE application features, and human resources and processes required to provide the service. The public and free EUDAT CDI B2SHARE service offers a shared platform for several communities. A new public and free community in CDI B2SHARE can be set up with limited basic features, depending on EUDAT CDI service provider resources and schedule. Joint-funded projects offer opportunities for some community tailoring, while contract-based Premium services can be tailored per customer needs.

  • A stable and trustworthy solution
    • Data storage is provided by stable European service providers, and data stays within the European Economic Area (EEA).
    • Professionally managed storage service – no need to worry about hardware provisioning
    • A scalable solution: free upload and registration of stable research data for researchers, within the capacity rules described in the free EUDAT CDI B2SHARE Terms of Use
    • Data owner defines access policy
    • Data is assigned a persistent identifier, which can be traced back to the data owner
    • Data integrity is ensured by a checksum during data ingestion
    • Monitoring of availability and usage
    • EUDAT user support
    • Based on the established InvenioRDM software
  • Interoperability promotes discovery, reuse and long-term impact of your research outputs
    • Interoperable with many European research communities, repositories and data management standards.
    • Integrated with the EUDAT collaborative data infrastructure services
    • Openly accessible and harvestable metadata
    • Datasets published in B2SHARE are automatically discoverable through EUDAT B2FIND, enhancing their reuse potential. Premium service offers more opportunities for extending discovery and reuse.
  • Data lifecycle management
    • Helps researchers and communities to follow FAIR principles of data management.
    • Community and researcher dashboards
    • Record metadata updates, versioning and management
    • Integrated license selector tool
    • Access request and granting workflows to limited-access datasets, including temporary access for external reviewers during publication embargo
    • Dataset view and download statistics
    • Cumulative statistics for communities
    • Publication review workflows to ensure conformance to community quality and policies
  • Tailorable solution
    • Application programming interface (REST API), which communities and research can use for integration with external community services, applications and workflows
    • The free EUDAT CDI B2SHARE service can offer limited tailoring for some communities in joint research project funding, such as Community-specific metadata extensions and user interfaces
    • More tailoring examples are described in EUDAT B2SHARE Premium Service Description

Service dependencies and integrations#

EUDAT B2SHARE Services are dependent on the following external services. The list isn’t exhaustive, and excludes internal service management related tools and services. Premium services can include other additional integrations not mentioned here.

  • Authentication and Authorisation Infrastructure (AAI)
    • EUDAT B2ACCESS - federated cross-infrastructure authorisation and authentication proxy for user authentication and community-defined access control enforcement.
  • Persistent Identifier (PID) assignment and resolution for datasets
    • EUDAT B2HANDLE - service for assigning, storing, managing and accessing persistent identifiers (ePIC handle) and essential metadata, and managing PID namespaces
    • DataCite DOI - consortium and services for assigning, storing, managing and accessing persistent identifiers (DOI) and essential metadata, and managing PID namespaces
    • Dataset metadata can include references to other external digital objects using various identifiers, such as ORCIDs for researchers, RORs for research organisations, etc.
  • Dataset discovery and reuse
    • EUDAT B2FIND - an interdisciplinary discovery portal and metadata indexing service, which harvests datasets from B2SHARE instances and other repositories
    • Dataset metadata harvested by B2FIND can further expose datasets to other national and international discovery services, such as OpenAIRE Explore.
  • Data ingestion and publication
    • EUDAT B2DROP - services for active data storage, sharing and synchronisation, which offers a bridge for ingesting data directly to B2SHARE services for publication
  • Documentation
    • Shared documentation platforms of EUDAT

Service Level Agreement (SLA)#

Service Availability#

The services are available for 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year. Availability target for the services is 97% or above. Availability is automatically measured by the Service Provider’s monitoring system. 

  • Scheduled service breaks (announced at least 7 days prior) do not affect the availability target.
  • Incident management-related downtimes do not lower service availability.
  • Announced service upgrades and security patches do not lower service availability.

Service maintenance#

Services have monthly service breaks; however, the times may vary:

  • Each service break is planned and informed to customers beforehand, and the exact date and time may vary. Usually, the breaks are scheduled between 12:00 - 18:00 EE(S)T. The service break announcement will be published on https://research.csc.fi/service-break/ at least one week before the planned service break.
  • It should be noted that the length of the service break depends on the tasks at hand and can be shorter than 6 hours.
  • If critical service maintenance measures must be carried out at other times, Service Provider shall endeavour to give at least two business days’ notice prior to the maintenance break.

Service support#

Service Provider is responsible for Service administration and support 8:30 - 16:00 EE(S)T on business days (Mon-Fri), excluding Finnish public holidays.

Service support is provided 8:30 - 16:00 EE(S)T on business days (Mon-Fri), excluding Finnish public holidays. Research communities and end users can use the following contact point for support: https://www.eudat.eu/contact-support-request. The response and resolution times are defined in the SLA section above. Premium service support is negotiable, and we can offer technical expert support for customer contacts through a separate support channel.

Service request response and resolution times follow the guidelines of EUDAT OLA.

  • Response Time calculation starts from the moment the ticket arrives in the support queue (during business hours) and ends when the ticket has been responded to. In case of CDI customers, CSC does not monitor or report EUDAT Helpdesk response times.
  • Resolution Time calculation starts from the moment the ticket arrives in the support queue (during business hours) and ends when the request has been resolved, or in case of an incident, when a workaround has been applied.
Request Type EUDAT Helpdesk response time B2SHARE Service Provider Response Time Resolution Time
Standard Service request - is a request for information, advice, access to a service, or a pre-approved change. 4h 1 business day 4 business days
Non-standard service request (change request) - is a request for information, advice, and access to service or changes which are not pre-approved and can lead to customised configurations and/or development to satisfy such a request. 4h 1 business day Not defined. If a Non-Standard service request cannot be resolved within the Standard Service Request Resolution time (4 business days), an estimate of the resolution time will be provided.

Incident management#

EUDAT CDI B2SHARE follows EUDAT and CSC general incident management guidelines for incident identification and classification, communication and escalation, reporting, and resolution and recovery procedures.

Quality reporting#

EUDAT CDI B2SHARE general service availability information is available at: https://avail.eudat.eu

The Service Provider does not report service availability or Helpdesk response times directly to EUDAT CDI B2SHARE communities or end-users.

Service management and development#

The Service Provider shall decide on the development of the Service, taking into account the views expressed by Customer organisations.

Service responsibilities#

Responsibilities and rights of Service Provider, Users and User Communities are in EUDAT CDI B2SHARE Terms of Use.

Further information#

This document was last modified on: 28.10.2025 This document was last reviewed on: 28.10.2025