Research Services
Research Services
Emory's Office of Information Technology (OIT) supports a variety of platforms and services for researchers – infrastructure to store and manage data, collaboration tools to work across teams and organize projects, applications to collect and track information about research studies, environments to visualize and compute data analyses, and more. In some cases, OIT also provides onboarding, training, and consultation resources to help researchers benefit from these platforms successfully. OIT often partners with school, unit IT organizations to coordinate the delivery of these services. This site lists IT platforms and services which should be considered for research use at Emory, along with links to more information.
Advisement and Guidance
We work with investigative teams to help them come up with secure and sustainable solutions for achieving their research goals. Whether the solution is provided by us or through an external third party, we are happy to listen to your needs, provide you with some options, and guide you in the right directions.
Rate: No additional cost
21 CFR Part 11 Electronic Signature Products (DocuSign / REDCap)
For electronic signatures that comply with 21 CFR Part 11, the University has two options: REDCap and DocuSign – each with their own 21 CFR Part 11 instance.
Rate: REDCap hosting is subsidized by the University. DocuSign has a $1.50/envelope cost associated with it.
Additional Information: DocuSign - REDCap
AWS at Emory (Amazon Web Services)
AWS at Emory is Emory University’s preferred and recommended cloud service for computational needs. The service provides access to Amazon’s cloud services, including computing, storage, database options, hosting, and advanced analytics, with a few exceptions that have been restricted for security purposes. The service is a multi-mission platform that can facilitate the advancement of science, education, and service across the University.
An AWS at Emory account can be provisioned upon request and be ready in under 30 minutes. OIT Research Solutions can provide orientation, training, and consulting services.
Rate: AWS at Emory is a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model where the user of the service is charged the amount directly from AWS. Emory users receive discounts. We recommend talking with the AWS at Emory team (aws.help@emory.edu) to ensure you know all the options before moving forward.
Community Cloud High-performance computing (HPC) Cluster (HyPER C3)
HyPER C3 provides a community high-performance computing (HPC) cluster to support compute-intensive scholarship at Emory. HyPER C3 offers faculty groups direct access to a state-of-the-art selection of high-performance compute nodes available in Emory’s AWS cloud, including general-purpose CPUs and GPU-based processors, high-end GPU instances and high-memory nodes, without the cost and burden of administrating clusters. The computing resources are served through the familiar Slurm cluster management interface, with a head/logon node and several partitions (or queues) suitable for a variety of scientific computing use cases.
A team of HPC engineers manages daily cluster administration and helps investigators with onboarding, training on using the cloud cluster, advice on leveraging the resources for projects, and designing solutions sets.
Rate: Shared standard usage is offered at no cost for active Emory faculty, academic staff, and students. Usage is governed through community “fair share” configurations and policies built into the cluster to optimize utilization. For programs needing priority/expanded compute resources, there is a possibility to fund a dedicated partition on the cluster.
Through the AWS at Emory service, one can spin up customized compute nodes to meet your data analytic needs. The AWS at Emory team can assist with training and onboarding.
Rollins School of Public Health, the SOM Biomedical Informatics department, and the Emerson Center all have their own on-premise cluster as well.
Rate: AWS at Emory is a ‘pay-as-you-go’ model where the user of the service is charged the amount directly from AWS. Emory users receive discounts. We recommend talking with the AWS at Emory team (aws.help@emory.edu) to ensure you know all the options before moving forward.
Data Request for Research: Emory Healthcare
Emory Healthcare has an enterprise data lake that includes data from Emory’s Epic medical record and the former EHC enterprise data repository, the clinical data warehouse. The data available includes patient demographics, diagnoses and procedures, clinical laboratory results, clinician documentation, medications, and inpatient, outpatient, and emergency department utilization and details.
Rate: Some departments have an analyst who provides support either through OIT or through internal resourcing. Currently, these OIT-partnered programs include: Anesthesiology, Brain Health Center, Emory Transplant Center, Medicine (through their DAB core), Radiology Imaging, Surgery, and Winship.
If your department does not have a resource, you can request data extraction services through a short-term engagement at $100/hr. Or, your department may wish to engage in the adopt-an-analyst program where the program and OIT work together to hire a dedicated analyst or data engineer.
Data Request for Research: Emory Partner (Atlanta VA, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, and Grady Health System)
Each healthcare entity has its own process for requesting the use of data for research purposes. In almost all cases, you must have an existing partnership or connection with the entity.
Atlanta VA: Data Analytics Core (DAC), VA Atlanta Health Care, Veterans Affairs
Children's Healthcare of Atlanta: Research Data Request Portal
Grady Health System: Office of Research Administration, please visit this page where you will have access to contact information and appropriate forms.
Rate: Variable
Additional Information: Atlanta VA - Children's Healthcare of Atlanta - Grady Health System
Dimensions / Find a Collaborator
Dimensions is a data source that contains aggregated information on grants, publications, clinical trials, patents and policy simultaneously, enabling you to build a richer picture of the global scholarly landscape by tracing research from idea to impact. Additional filters, further analytical views and increased export capabilities make this an advanced solution for informing research and grant application strategy, reporting, conducting ongoing analysis and evaluation, and finding collaborators at other institutions based on their research contributions.
Rate: No additional cost
Document Sharing (OneDrive / SharePoint)
OneDrive for Business is cloud storage provided under our Microsoft 365 educational licensing. The storage is your Emory personal storage, and is actually a part of SharePoint Online ecosystem. Every user at Emory University and Healthcare has a 5TB (terabyte) personal quota in OneDrive for Business.
For laboratory support, we highly recommend that a lab folder be created, one not tied to a post doctoral fellow or graduate student, as these accounts are deleted once the person who is tied to a OneDrive account leaves the University.
Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 Groups, and SharePoint Online Communication sites have a 25TB quota and is intended for shared use amongst Teams, Departments, Projects, etc.
Rate: No additional cost
Electronic Document Signature: DocuSign
Emory has an Enterprise DocuSign account for compiling and sharing documents that need electronic signatures. The Enterprise DocuSign account is a shared service available to all organizations throughout Emory University.
Rate: The base DocuSign product that allows you to do electronic signatures for documents is available at no charge.
If you require the DocuSign signature to be compliant with 21 CFR Part 11 – normally for those folks who have a FDA clinical trial or have a contract that requires this higher level of requirements, there is a cost of $1.50/envelope for this additional service.”
E-mail communication is part of everyone's work day, and while great care should be taken to avoid sending sensitive information to non-Emory recipients via e-mail, sometimes it cannot be avoided. Emory offers an encrypted e-mail service to all Emory faculty, staff, students and Healthcare employees who must send sensitive information external recipients.
Please ensure you are authorized to send the information before sending it.
Rate: No additional cost
ERSR (Emory Research Subject Registry)
The Emory Research Subject Registry (ERSR) is a web-based application that provides a central place to track and manage study enrollment and subject participant data for clinical research studies. The application features a service-oriented architecture that allows (optional) integration and synchronization of events and shared data with other research systems, such as REDCap (for longitudinal research data capture), Emory OpenSpecimen LIMS (for research specimen management) and a Salesforce implementation for study participant recruitment.
OIT Research Solutions provides implementation to incorporate a new research team’s study protocols into the enterprise system.
Rate: $100 per hour for initial setup based on an agreed-upon list of requirements. $500 per IRB protocol per year.
The Center for Digital Scholarship works with scholars to incorporate geospatial technologies and data visualization into their research and teaching.
Rate: No additional cost
Laboratory Informatics Custom Integrations
Design and development of special-purpose lab informatics workflows integrations, such as automated lab instrument data file scripting and transfer to secure Emory storage, or synchronization of OpenSpecimen LIMS specimen operations with automated freezer equipment inventory, and more. These custom integrations can help optimize instrument data operations, synchronization, and security.
Rate: Variable, through specific statement of work or “Adopt a LIMS analyst” model. May incur 3rd-party extension purchase and/or custom code development and maintenance.
Additional Information
LIMS - Laboratory Information Management System (OpenSpecimen)
Emory OpenSpecimen is a secure, internally hosted application designed to support workflow automation and information tracking related to biospecimen sample management and processing as part of Emory’s Bio-Banking infrastructure.
OIT Research Solutions provides implementation to incorporate a new laboratory’s configuration into the enterprise system. For those groups requiring someone to configure or run a OpenSpecimen instance for their laboratory, we provide that service as part of the Service Center recharge effort.
Rate: Hosting costs are at no additional costs - they are subsidized by the University through the Senior VP of Research office.
For those programs that would like additional help above and beyond hosting, “Adopt a LIMS analyst” where the lab and OIT work together to hire a dedicated LIMS professional for the lab. Otherwise, for shorter-term engagements, $100/hour.
Microsoft Azure Self Supported Subscriptions
Azure is Microsoft’s cloud services environment. Today, Emory’s Azure cloud is in limited tactical use and not the primary or preferred cloud environment for use by Emory faculty and staff. Instead, faculty and staff are encouraged to use AWS at Emory cloud AWS at Emory. Nevertheless, if Azure services are required for specific departmental or project needs, then Emory’s Azure cloud is approved for limited use.
Rate: All Microsoft Azure service fees incurred (i.e. Azure subscriptions) are the responsibility of the department/individual.
Multi-site / Consortium IT Coordination
Design consultation and guidance, as well as planning and coordination of IT infrastructure development or modernization for a collaborative project/programs. This includes use case elicitation, current/future state analysis of functional requirements, and best practice technology recommendation and implementation.
Rate: Variable, through specific statement of work, “Adopt an IT coordinator” model, or development team resources.
OIT's Center for Digital Scholarship provides support to faculty and students who would like to incorporate video and audio into their teaching and research. Faculty and students may pursue options including:
- Creating stand-alone multimedia pieces.
- Developing multimodal works where video and audio work in tandem with other forms of information and expression.
Rate: No additional cost
OIT's Center for Digital Scholarship provides consultations about network analysis, a computational approach to studying the relationships between people, places, or things. This approach assumes that understanding interconnectedness is central to research and seeks to quantify relationships so that they can be visualized and explored graphically.
Rate: No additional cost
OIT's Center for Digital Scholarship provides consultations about building accessible online exhibits, which present a curated selection of items virtually and can be assembled with a variety of platforms.
Rate: No additional cost
The use of ORCID iDs is strongly encouraged and often required by federal agencies to identify faculty and trainees and attribute their publications, grant funding and other scholarly activities over the span of their career. Anyone can create their unique ORCID iD and scholar profile, and link it to their Emory NetID in a few steps, which helps improve automation of research administration processes.
Rate: No additional cost
Recruitment Registry
Some research projects with significant participant recruitment requirements may be interested in the Salesforce registry in place used by the Brain Health and All of Us initiatives.
Rate: Variable, through specific statement of work.
REDCap Research Electronic Data Capture
REDCap is a secure, Emory hosted web-based application designed exclusively to support data capture for research studies through forms and survey instruments. REDCap can also be used for collecting data for non-research tracking activities.
A project or survey is provisioned to a research team and training and initial design consultation can be provided by OIT Research Solutions. For those groups requiring someone to configure or run a REDCap project for them, the group does provide that service as part of the Service Center recharge effort.
Rate: All hosting costs are subsidized by the University and the Senior VP of Research office. For non-research projects, there is a monthly subscription of $25/month per project.
For those programs who would like additional help above and beyond hosting, “Adopt a REDCap administrator” where the program and OIT work together to hire a dedicated REDCap engineer for the program. Otherwise, for shorter-term engagements, $100/hour.
In addition, programs that require a greater level of customizations or special developer access can fund a dedicated instance of REDCap hosted in Emory’s enterprise environment with a shared administration model.
REDCap Research Electronic Data Capture – FDA CFR 21 Part 11 compliant hosting
REDCap is a secure, Emory hosted web-based application designed exclusively to support data capture for research studies through forms and survey instruments. For clinical studies that are regulated by the FDA, Emory University offers a dedicated instance of REDCap validated in compliance with FDA 21 CFR Part 11 requirements. The Part 11 Compliant REDCap application is hosted on Emory’s HIPAA compliant hosting environment managed by Emory OIT, with limited functionality and access, and upgraded and re-validated through a LTS maintenance cycle. The validation includes e-consent module, e-docs module and the file vault feature which establishes a secure “write once read many” data storage environment.
Rate: REDCap Part 11 project hosting is subsidized by the University. For those programs who would like additional help above and beyond hosting, “Adopt a REDCap administrator” where the program and OIT work together to hire a dedicated REDCap engineer for the program. Otherwise, for shorter-term engagements, $100/hour.
Research Data Management and Sharing Plans (DMPTool)
Support for research data management and sharing plans is available to help research teams meet the requirement of certain funding agencies such as NIH and NSF. This includes Emory-focused guidance and grant template language and access to Emory’s DMPTool to document and generate project-specific data management plans. Data management plan consultation can be provided upon request, including best practice and customized guidance to help research teams manage and securely store data throughout their lifecycle, through local and centralized resources.
Rate: No additional cost for consultation and referral. For further engagement, variable, through specific statement of work or “Adopt an IT advisor” model.
Research Data Repository (Dataverse)
To support long-term publishing, sharing and findability of data generated by a research project such as for meeting funding agencies’ data sharing mandates, Emory offers access to the Dataverse generalist data repository, through a partnership between Emory and the Odum Institute at the University of North Carolina and Chapel Hill. Datasets deposited with Dataverse are each assigned a unique persistent Digital Object Identifier (DOI) and are made available through a searchable web interface.
Rate: No additional cost
Support and consult on innovative digital approaches to traditional publishing genres such as books, journals, and scholarly editions, and work with scholars on new forms of digital publishing such as thematic research collections, expansive digital projects, and more.
Rate: No additional cost
Source Code Repository (GitHub)
GitHub at Emory is OIT’s enterprise offering of the popular software development collaboration and version control system based on git. This platform enables research team to store and manage their source code, including scripts for data analytics.
Rate: No additional cost
Microsoft Teams is a great way to communicate and collaborate within groups or departments. It adds Instant Messaging, Audio, Video, and integration capabilities to help a group's workflow. Teams is most comparable to a competitive product, Slack.
Rate: No additional cost
Zoom is a full-featured web and video conferencing service that offers online meetings and webinars. Features include polling, breakout rooms, instant messaging, and a wide variety of audio options.
There is a HIPAA compliant version of Zoom.
Rate: No additional cost
Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, and Mixed Reality
OIT’s Emory Center for Digital Scholarship helps students and faculty members with interactive, multidisciplinary media design, research insights, visual analytics, educational gaming, and various simulation and training activities.
The lab implements emerging technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR) to visualize academic content.
Rate: No additional cost
Tableau enables the Emory community to see and understand their data, answering valuable business questions and giving insight into large data sets collected over time. This fosters collaboration between colleagues and creates a culture of data driven business.
OIT Research Solutions can provision Tableau licenses, training and initial consultation. OIT IT Data Solutions can also be engagement to support dashboard development.
Rate: Tableau Creator (Desktop and Prep License): $630 per year. Tableau Server (Publisher License): $2,500 per year. Dashboard Development: $100 per hour based upon an agreed-upon list of visualization requirements. Specific programs can also fund a dedicated site for their special-purpose requirements.
Software: MatLab (desktop licenses)
MatLab desktop product.
Rate: Subsidized by the University. Must be used for non-healthcare work.
Software: Mathematica (desktop licenses)
Mathematica desktop product.
Rate: Subsidized by the University. Must be used for non-healthcare work.
Software: Qualtrics (school-specific)
Qualtrics is an advanced online survey development platform. It can be used for conducting survey research and other electronic data capture activities. It is a general survey tool with advanced survey functionality. It is not as well suited for longitudinal data capture, like REDCap though.
Rate: Many schools have school-wide Qualtrics licenses, including College, Medicine, and RSPH. For others, please reach out to your school/unit’s IT organization.
Software: SAS (desktop licenses)
SAS desktop product.
Rate: Subsidized by the University. Must be used for non-healthcare work.
Software: SPSS (desktop licenses)
SPSS desktop product.
Rate: Subsidized by the University. Must be used for non-healthcare work.
Service: Business Analysis Process and Tools
Offers guidance, tools/processes, or recharge personnel to assist with analyzing business requirements, current state/future state workflows, and business process development.
Rate: Adopt a business analyst program or for short-term engagements $100/hour charge.
Service: Data Research Repositories
Offers data integration services including regular retrieval of data sets, blending of data sources, and full-scale data marts built using numerous data sources across multiple platforms.
Rate: ‘Adopt-an-analyst’ where the program and OIT work together to hire a dedicated analyst or data engineer for the program. Otherwise, for shorter-term engagements, $100/hour.
Service: Op/Dev Process and Tools
Assist faculty, staff, and students with building operating/development pipelines to support IT needs.
Rate: No additional cost
Service: Project Management Process and Tools
Offers guidance, tools/processes, or recharge personnel to assist with managing IT projects.
Rate: Adopt a project manager program or for short-term engagements $100/hour charge.
Service: Salesforce / Custom Application Development
Emory provides Salesforce development expertise for those projects looking to roll out a Saleforce-based solution. We highly recommend reaching out to us as soon as possible as there are a number of different options and a set of standard Salesforce practices at Emory that you will want to take advantage of.
Rate: Solution design and initial consultation are services subsidized by the University. We do provide Salesforce development and administrative services either through an ‘adopt a developer/administrator’ model for long-term engagements or $100/hour rates for shorter term.
Hosting: Database Hosting
Provides hosting platform for on-premise databases. This service does not include schema level programming or data integration associated with the databases.
Rate: No additional cost
Hosting: Data Center
Researchers may store their IT servers in the University data center where it has the appropriate physical and environmental controls for servers and IT hardware.
Rate: Hosting within the data center is subsidized by the University. Standard cabinet must be purchased and associated network connectivity fees apply.
Hosting: Storage
Storage Management provides central IT, academic, and research customers with a cost effective and highly available service to address their file and data management needs. There are storage solutions available for structured and unstructured primary, shared, archival, and backup data accessible from high-speed data center networks, as well as using standard campus network connectivity.
Rate: Variable
Additional Information: Please check with your local IT unit for guidance
Hosting: Web Hosting
Hosting of web sites, particularly those using the enterprise Cascade content management system. Creation of the actual web sites are done at the unit-level.
Rate: No additional cost
For additional information on these, or requests for other information, please contact the University Service Desk.
Phone: 404.727.7777
Hours: Mon-Fri: 7:00AM–6:00PM, Limited Support: After-hours, weekends and holidays