Professionalising Social Science Research Data Management with RDM Compas

Abstract

It is not only since the publication of the FAIR principles, requiring the Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable organisation of research outputs, that the demands placed on researchers when conducting good scientific practices have increased. Universities and other research institutions have responded to this and offer increasing support, especially regarding research data management (RDM). This is to support their researchers in the FAIR organisation and thus transparent sharing of all their research outputs. However, digital curation and RDM are complex and demand an interplay of various skills and knowledge. So far, there are no established training programmes. Therefore, projects aiming to support researchers in RDM often face one major challenge: Recruiting staff well trained in RDM.

In our project, we examined data curation skill needs and various approaches to define these needs. Paired with the DCC Curation Lifecycle Model and survey results from Social Science Research Data Centres in Germany, we defined curation skill needs and learning trajectories and implemented these in an information and training platform for data curation in the social sciences, RDM Compas, with its content organized along the DCC Curation Lifecycle Model. A newly developed data curation module in a nationwide RDM certification course compliments the training path toward professional RDM.