Software

If you use our software for your research, please cite:

Boeschoten, L., De Schipper, N.C., Mendrik, A.M., Van der Veen, E., Struminskaya, B., Janssen, H. and Araujo, T. (2023). Port: A software tool for digital data donation. Journal of Open Source Software, 8(90), 5596, https://doi.org/10.21105/joss.05596

How does our data donation software work?

Our software for data donation is called Port. Port consists of a number of elements, that together allow you to configure a data donation study according to the workflow explained here.

The data donation task

The most important part of a study that follows the data donation workflow is the “data donation task”. This is the step that facilitates that participants can actually donate their data.

Since every study is interested in different platforms to collect data from, or in different parts of the data of a platform, the “data donation task” is an application that you can create yourself using a Python script. Here you can find the Github repository of the Data Donation Task. Read this documentation to get started with the Data Donation Task.

The Next platform

Port is available as a software service on the open-source Next platform. So in order to use Port, you need access to Next. There are multiple ways you can access Next:

• Purchase a Software-as-a-Service license at Eyra.
• Use Next on Surf Research Cloud through a SURF e-infra grant, contact Laura Boeschoten for more information.
• Host Next yourself.

Look at the decision tree to decide which option fits your project best.

Support

Are you interested in doing a data donation study? We can help you!

We:

• Prepare the Data Donation Task for your study.
• Offer support if you create your own Data Donation Task.
• Have a community of developers that you can join on Basecamp and Slack.

Email Laura Boeschoten in case you are interested.