How To: Good Scientific Practice

• C. Hillen
• Data , RDM , good scientific practice

“Scientific integrity forms the basis for trustworthy research”, so it says in the Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Research Practice of the DFG, the German Research Foundation. As a major funder of research in Germany the DFG, as well as many other funders of research in Germany and the European Union, requires researchers to follow a certain set of rules conducting their research. These rules are called “good scientific practice” and have to be followed by researchers to be viable for funding. According to the guidelines researchers are required to “document all information relevant to the production of a research result as clearly as is required by and is appropriate for the relevant subject area to allow the result to be reviewed and assessed”. But good scientific practice is not done by documenting your research. It also includes i.a. protecting the personality rights of your subjects and handling research data in an appropriate manner by e.g. “back(-ing) up research data and results made publicly available, as well as the central materials on which they are based and the research software used, by adequate means according to the standards of the relevant subject area, and retain them for an appropriate period of time.” This is where Research Data Management (RDM) comes in. Of course RDM is much more than just creating a backup of your data on a USB-Stick and handing it over to anyone asking for it. “Good scientific practice” in RDM follows the FAIR principles:

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Status Meeting of the German Data Literacy Centers

From September 19th to 20th the BMBF is inviting representatives of all eleven Data Literacy Centers in Germany to come together in Berlin and discuss the progress and the difficulties of the projects. There will be two days of workshops with topics ranging from discussions of domain-specific data literacy to strategies and concept for stabilizing data literacy projects. Furthermore, there will be plenty of time for networking with the other Data literacy centers, as well as invited speakers from other data literacy and research data management initiatives such as the NFDI. Our main coordinator, Alicia Janz, and Lukas Bossert from RWTH Aachen University will represent the DKZ.2R at the meeting. We are looking forward to gaining insights into the work of other data literacy centers and learning from their experiences and the measures they are taking to support scientist in their work with research data.

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Tag der Forschungsdaten NRW

For this year’s Research Data Day (Tag der Forschungsdaten) NRW, on the 12th of November 2024, Forschungszentrum Jülich and the RWTH Aachen University teamed up again to host an on-site event, this time in Jülich, which will be co-organised by DKZ.2R. Similarly to the last years, there will be online talks in the morning which will be viewed publicly. After Lunch we are starting with the on-site program including different talks and theme tables. More information on the concept an the event can be found under this link.

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