RDM Services for smaller research projects: Guide to cultural change

Increasingly researchers in small research projects are expected, for example by research sponsors or by specialist journals, to conduct a research data management (RDM) in line with the FAIR principles, and to make their data available for reuse. Nevertheless, in projects, which are not supported by designated infrastructures such as research data centres, the structured archiving of data, and its subsequent provisional use by third parties, is not yet a common practice for a number of reasons. Although a lot of information and services for a professional RDM are now available to researches, data often still remains without FAIR metadata or anonymisation concepts locked in and available to primary researchers – depending on the respective discipline, but also on other requirements, such as protection of trust in the field. The objective of the working group is to support the cultural shift towards professional archiving practices and – as far as feasible – support the sharing of (meta)-data among researchers. Therefore, the support service should already be provided when planning primary data collection and associated RDM concepts for grant applications. It should then accompany the research process with an overview of supporting materials and tools throughout the research cycle up until archiving practices. The degree of support needed for researchers in individual research projects should be determined in advance, in order to provide a precise guide to existing services and to highlight practice-oriented applications for their own RDM.

• Format: Working group with external members
• Objective: analyse existing RDM offers and elicitation of research-political desiderata and create a guide for researchers
• Output: development of a digital guide (e.g. website) of RDM issues and existing services, publication of a summary in the German Data Forum’s (RatSWD) Output Series
• Time frame: start in winter 2020, finish in 2023