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Development of best practices and networking

Excerpt from "Guidelines on Digital Research Data at TU Darmstadt"

"All research groups at TUDa strive to be up to date with regard to the rules, standards and recommendations for research data management that apply to their discipline. To this end, they appoint a scientific staff member as RDM officer who actively follows developments and supports the group members in research data management. The development of subject-specific recommendations at the appropriate level (departments, institutes, etc.) is recommended. An RDM officer can also be appointed for several methodologically or disciplinary related disciplines. The RDM officers exchange information with each other at the appropriate level (at least in the department). TUdata supports the RDM officers and their networking." (Guideline 6)

Note

Detailed information on the role and tasks of an RDM officer can be found on the TUdata website

First Steps

If you have been appointed as RDM officer for your working group, we ask you to inform us about your appointment and suggest that you subscribe to the following mailing lists:

1. Send an e-mail to with the following information

  • Department - which department (German "Fachbereich") do you work in?
  • Research Group - for which research group (German "Fachgebiet" or "Arbeitskreis") have you been appointed?
  • Name
  • E-Mail
  • Relevant NFDI consortia - list any NFDI-Consortia that you consider relevant for your research group. Please indicate consortia you actively participate in.
  • Interests and Needs - list any research data related topics which you are interested in or for which you require support (e.g. ELN, HPC, HDF5, RDF, TDM, metadata extraction, file formats, quality control, large data volumes, sustainable source code, ...)

This information will be published on the Research Data Officers page.

2. Subscribe to our mailing list

3. Subscribe to subject-specific RDM information sources

Overview of NFDI consortia: https://www.nfdi.de/consortia/?lang=en

Newsletters and mailing lists:

For more mailing lists from the NFDI context, please see the NFDI mailing lists overview.

Develop or adapt best practices suitable for your research

We recommend to create your own recommendations for your researchers, in which you present RDM workflows and conventions established in your group. You can use the material presented on this website as starting point and adapt it to your local needs.

Engage in RDM network

Develop solutions in collaboration with other scientists

Many researchers meet similar challenges when adopting research data management. We encourage you to talk to other rdm officers and colleagues to find out if others already found a solution or in order to develop a solution together. The TUDa rdm network will support this exchange.

Please share your best practices and workflows with the TUDa RDM network

The purpose of the TUDa RDM network is to establish an exchange between people managing research data which will help to make RDM at TUDa more efficient. In order for this to work, it is essential that you

In addition, you can also share your best practices and workflows within larger communities. This is a good way to expand your network, engage with the community, and build reputation. Others will be interested in your approach to RDM and you can learn a lot by staying informed about those of others. You can do so by

  • publishing solutions in suitable journals
    • for example, TU Darmstadt publishes ing.grid, a journal focusing on RDM in engineering and related sciences
  • presenting at suitable conferences
    • for example, the NFDI4Ing Conference for engineering sciences or other NFDI consortia conferences.