What is Yoda?
Yoda is an application that supports you as an EUR researcher during all phases of your research project: from the safe and easy storage of data, to the sharing of data within your research group and/or project, and ultimately, to the research data archiving and publication.
Why Yoda?
Yoda allows you to safely store, manage, and share your research data through an EUR Yoda Workspace. You benefit from working with Yoda in several ways:
- Your valuable data is stored securely;
- You work with your data and archive it in one place;
- You can collaborate with partners from Erasmus University Rotterdam as well as external partners by giving them access to your data;
- Yoda is suitable for sensitive data;
- You make your data findable for yourself and others by adding metadata;
- You manage and share your data in compliance with privacy rules and data management regulations;
- You can work with your data from multiple locations through the website portal;
- Yoda supports all kinds of digital source files, like text files, videos, photos, excel files, R files, STATA files, datasheets, geographical data, etc.
- Yoda uses iRODS as a foundation, which caters to (very) data-intensive research. However, Yoda is much easier to use, making it more accessible to a wide range of researchers.
You can find more information on the ‘EUR Yoda Workspace’ Research Support Portal page.
Please note: Only EUR-employees have access to the Research Support Portal.
Yoda and FAIR data
Yoda helps researchers to make their data FAIR by providing a solution that enables data discovery and sharing (i.e. findable, accessible). It facilitates and enforces the use of metadata, thereby contributing to data interoperability and reusability.
Yoda provides a platform for the implementation of standard workflows which ensure that metadata quality satisfies (institutional) policy requirements, for example, for data archiving and publication. In addition, Yoda’s integration with iRODS forms a single platform that accommodates both researchers seeking an accessible and user-friendly solution and those with data heavy requirements.
Archiving in EUR Yoda Vault
Our institutional data archive, EUR Yoda Vault, is a module of the EUR Yoda environment, where you can archive (snapshots of) your data. For more information visit the EUR Yoda Vault page. Support for these processes can be found on the Data Archiving Support page.
Please note: Only EUR-employees have access to the EUR Yoda Vault and Data Archiving Support pages.
Additional Resources
Yoda is hosted by SURF and developed by a consortium of Dutch universities. You can find detailed guidance on using Yoda on the Yoda portal (hosted by Utrecht University) and SURF Yoda wiki. The application is based on iRODS technology, so it is possible to transfer data to and from Yoda using the iRODS communication protocol (iCommands).
This page was last updated in August 2025. Did you find a broken link or (seemingly) incorrect information? Please send an email with the title 'Website content' to datasteward@eur.nl.