Use cases of Institutional RDM Support - OpenAIRE blog series

Image by Patrick Hochstenbach CC-BY

In OpenAIRE Advance a programme involving many NOADs working on task forces, exists to enable capacity building, competencies and awareness raising on different relevant open science topics. There are two task forces, one on Policies and Legal Guidelines, and one on Research Data Management. The task forces have produced many guides, webinars and blogs demonstrating a vertical approach for knowledge exchange¹.

A wide array of publications and training on how to organise Research Data Management Support in research institutions² do already exist. However the members of the task force, being often involved in RDM support in their own universities, felt a need to have access to more practical examples to support them and others in their work of setting up and maintaining RDM support services. Some universities, like the Technical University Delft in the Netherlands already share their experiences, such in the case of Delft, where a model of data stewards on domain level was set up³. If you are interested in how other universities have approached this, see the list of practice references below.

DMP workshops at the University of Helsinki

To provide more hands-on examples of setting up RDM support, the task force set out to write a number of blogs about RDM support at research institutions providing both first hand experience of the process and bottom-up input for other institutions in the process of setting up RDM support.

The published blog posts so far are:

• Kimmo Koskinen, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9772-6366, 'Institutional RDM Support at the University of Helsinki', published in June 2019.
• Emilie Hermans, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6594-7826 , '4 Challenges for institutional research data management support', published in November 2019.
• Susanne Blumesberger https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9018-623X, 'Research Data Management (RDM) Support at the University of Vienna', published in December 2019.
• Michal Růžička https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5547-8720 et al,'Institutional RDM Support at the Masaryk University', published in June 2020.

The first blog on institutional RDM support in practice was published in June 2019 and contained the practice at the University of Helsinki, Finland. As the blog was well received, two other blogs were published soon after. One blog identified the challenges faced at Ghent University, Belgium. A third blog detailed the organisation of RDM support at the University of Vienna, Austria. The fourth and last blog of the series features a recently started open science project that is expected to boost the RDM support provided at the Masaryk University (Czech Republic).

Not surprising the practices of institutional RDM support have some elements in common. These include factors such as: It takes a long time it took to get officially organised and set up internal procedures, the multidisciplinary teams of experts the support usually relies on and the type of training and support materials it provides. 

The blogs also show the professionalism this support has achieved. Surely inspiration is also expected from initiatives such as from the (to be formed) RDA Interest Group for Data Stewards professionalism⁴. In the blogs it is clear that the first step in organising institutional RDM support is to achieve management support and funds and then start with a small group of enthusiastic experts, collaborate with experts nationally and make sure clear RDM policies and support are in place in due time.