Scientific Partnership: A Pledge for a New Level of Collaboration between Scientists and IT Specialists

ICT technologies play an increasing role in almost every aspect of science. The adaption of the new technologies however consume an increasing amount of the researcher's time, time they could better spend on their actual research. Not adapting new technologies however will inevitably lead to biased research, since scientists will not know about all the possibilities and methods that are available from modern technology. This dilemma can only be resolved by close collaboration and scientific partnership between researchers and IT experts from i.e. a local computing centre. In contrast to traditional IT service provision, IT experts have to understand the scientific problems and methods of the scientists in order to help them to select suitable services. If none are available, they can then consider adapting existing services or develop new ones according to the actual needs of the scientists. In addition, the partnership helps towards good scientific practice, since the IT experts can ensure reproducibility of the research by professionalising the workflow and applying FAIR data principles. We elaborate on this dilemma with examples from an IT centre's perspective, and sketch a path towards unbiased research and the development of new IT services that are tailored for the scientific community.