Generally speaking, a service can be described as one or multiple objects, systems or activities that an agent makes available to another agent, in order to enable a user to perform a specific activity. In the context of DARIAH a service represents an action that one or more institutions affiliated to DARIAH (the service provider/s) offers to another (DARIAH) institution or single researcher in order to enable the user of the service to reach a certain objective (related to the enrichment, dissemination and sustainability of research outputs).
The following in-kind contribution activities are described in the DARIAH Reference Architecture:
- Data Hosting Service, for example, data repository service, data deposit service, software repository,
- Data Processing Service, for example, NERD service, data cleaning,
- Support Service, for example, help-desk, software maintenance,
- Access to Resources, for example, educational resources, data resource, enriching/creating metadata not normally available.