Research Data Management at 9 Universities in Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany. The Results from the Final Report of the bwFDM Communities Project

Abstract

See video of the presentation.

On 17^th July 2015 the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts for Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany, invited national experts to the presentation of the final report of the ‘bwFDM communities’ project. This 18 month project was launched at the beginning of 2014 to evaluate the needs of services and the support that libraries and IT service centres should offer researchers in the area of research data management. Full-time key project staff had been established at all 9 universities in the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg to conduct semi-structured personal interviews of all research groups working with research data (in a broad sense including all areas of science, social science and humanities) and to document them in the form of user stories. 627 interviews have been conducted and more than 2,500 user stories could be extracted, showing the wide range of needs and wishes articulated by researchers. On this basis issues of importance and requirements had be identified, categorised in 18 different groups and finalised into an analysis of the status quo and recommendations for concrete action plans. The results cover the areas ‘general requirements and policy framework’, ‘data collection and data sharing’, ‘technical framework and virtual research environments’, ‘preservation’,  ‘IT infrastructure and IT support’, ‘licencing’ and ‘Open Science’.

The presentation will give an overview of the project results and will highlight the roles libraries and IT service centres are expected to play from the researcher´s point of view.

As the final report to the Ministry contributes to a comprehensive research data management strategy for the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg, the presentation will also point out the status of the federal strategy in RDM.