Zentrumfür Nachhaltiges Forschungsdatenmanagement

What is Heurist

Heurist is an Open Source collaborative web database service for recording, managing, analysing, visualising, publishing and archiving richly interlinked and heterogeneous research data without the need for a dedicated server, programming or a great deal of technical support. Unlike most database systems, the structure of a database can be instantly modified and extended as research needs evolve, without affecting existing content. All interaction is through a standard web browser.

Heurist provides

• web bookmarking; bibliographic functions including Zotero synchronisation
• flexible data import (CSV, XML, KML, JSon, bookmarks)
• export of CSV, XML, JSon, KML, Gephi and archival data packages, custom reporting, network, map and timeline visualisations
• web site generation and management (built-in CMS). For advanced users there is an API and the ability to extend the software with new widgets.

Your Advantages

• No waiting time and expense for requesting a respective infrastructure. A short message or phone call suffices to receive a password and you can start your project right away.
• No cost of maintenance and service for operating system, database and necessary service applications
• Simple, intuitive modeling of your research data
• Flexibility. Subsequent extensions and changes of your data model can be added without much ado
• Attachments of pictures, audio, or video to prevalent data sets
• Flexible memory capacity. You do not have to specify the exact amount of memory needed in the course of your project for your research data.
• Personalized workshops and consulting by the FDM team. You can come to our office hours for any questions without consultation. Prior consultation is needed if you like to get an introductory personal workshop to Heurist for a recently approved research project
• Automatic generation of a corresponding website. It only takes a few mouse clicks to define which contents of your data should be presented to the public.
• No extensions for your project have to be requested. FDM gurantees to keep the data for at least ten years after officially finalizing the research project.

See what is there

Klick on the button below to see which projects exists at this Heurist instance. Most of them are password protected. You can see the project Probier_Mich as a guest user (Login and password is identical with the project name).

Get started

If you like to use Heurist or want to try things out, send us a message at forschungsdaten@uni-hamburg.de (Please do not change the subject so that your message can be categorized accordingly). You will receive a password that you need to create a project.