The University of California, Berkeley historically lagged behind peer institutions in research data storage, offering 200 GB per faculty member while peers provided 5 - 30 TB. Faculty turned to ad hoc, insecure storage practices, and appealed to campus to take action. In response, campus IT, Research IT, and the Library launched a Faculty Storage Allocation Program, offering 5 TB per faculty across five storage options, improving security, compliance, and resilience to data loss and ransomware. The Library's local Dataverse instance was initially deployed to accommodate licensed collections with fine-grained access controls, and now faculty will use it to publish and manage their larger research datasets (1 TB+). A campus-funded data curator will onboard researchers and teach FAIR principles, promoting discoverability and reuse. The service integrates emerging technologies and standards: machine-actionable metadata, persistent identifiers (DOIs, ORCID), AI-assisted metadata enrichment, automated fixity checks, and ransomware-resistant backups, all of which advance preservation, interoperability, and open knowledge. Combined storage, curation, and community outreach create a sustainable, future-ready ecosystem that protects research, amplifies scholarly impact, supports compliance, and fosters campus-wide stewardship of research data. Planned governance, training, and disciplinary partnerships will ensure equitable access, responsible stewardship, and long-term sustainability into the future.
Sackmann et al. (Mon,) studied this question.