Abstract:

Making research data available is an aspect of good scientific practice. The planning, collection, processing, storage and sustainable provision of research data must meet recognised standards and high requirements in order to ensure traceability and verifiability as well as further use after publication. In this sense, research data is understood to be all data that is generated during the research process or is the result of it. The research process encompasses the entire cycle from generation (e.g. through digitisation, source research, experiments, documented observations and empirical studies), processing and analysis, to publication and archiving of the data. Research data is generated in all scientific disciplines using different methods.

The Center for Information and Media Technology (ZIM), the University and State Library (ULB) and the Research & Transfer Department support the faculties and institutions of Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (HHU) in research data management (RDM). The ZIM operates a high-performance storage and long-term archiving infrastructure, the ULB offers researchers advice on the creation of data management plans and on questions concerning metadata and indexing options, and the Research & Transfer Department provides support in the application process.

RDM tools are an important part of our RDM portfolio. During our cooperation project with the Universities of Siegen and Wuppertal, we were able to expand and enhance our tool diversity: A new open-source software for the creation of a data management plan was set up in order to keep an optimal overview of the data management during the research project. The three universities also operate a common storage grid, which is redundantly set up at all three locations and thus offers high data security and availability. This storage grid is based on open source repository software, which is also used at all three locations. We were also one of the first universities in Germany to focus more strongly on the topic of "electronic lab notebooks" (ELN), to find a new circle of users, to offer software solutions directly and to establish a sustainable network within North Rhine-Westphalia's universities. The dialogue between the cooperation partners on the RDM solutions and service portfolios created during the collaboration supports transparency in the provision of RDM services for researchers at all three locations and has a positive effect on cooperation between the universities.

We specifically approached university researchers and invited them to weekly research data management meetings to discuss individual tasks and problems of the research project. This way, suitable solutions for the researchers could be offered and the use of the available tools could be explained directly using appropriate examples.

Our service portfolio also includes the provision of the recorded trainings. Various training formats were tried out, including short and concise "coffee lectures", training sessions at the different locations, exchange of modular topic blocks oriented on the structure of forschungsdaten.info, and all training sessions were evaluated according to specific criteria. We have based the development of our portfolio planning and the orientation of our RDM tools on the evaluation and analysis of consulting and training, and were thus able to effectively support the research projects of our university and its project partners.

Keywords:

Research data management, good scientific practice, trainings, RDM tools, portfolio.