Training session on Research Data Management in Warsaw

On June 22, 2015, a one­day training session in Research Data Management (RDM) was organized in Warsaw by the Open Science Platform (ICM, University of Warsaw), ­ the Polish OpenAIRE2020 NOAD.

The session was run by Kevin Ashley, director of the Digital Curation Centre (UK). Thirty participants from different parts of Poland attended the workshop. The majority of them were active researchers ­ mostly PhD students and young researchers ­ and librarians and data specialists were also present.

The workshop was designed for researchers from all fields of study, dealing with general aspects of research data management. It was divided into five sessions, starting with a talk on the benefits of proper data management for the researchers themself. The second part, judged later by the participants as most useful, concerned data management planning and included practical exercises on preparing data management plans.

Further topics covered legal issues related to sharing of research data ­ a complicated subject that also attracted much interest ­ and the selection and preparation of data for deposition in a suitable data archive. The questions discussed during this part included: what should be taken into account when deciding which data should be archived and which not? Which data should be openly accessible and which should not? What additional documentation should be archived along the data and what can be discarded?

The last part of the workshop consisted of a talk in which funder requirements were presented, in particular the Open Research Data Pilot in Horizon 2020. Overall, the workshop participants found the training session beneficial, as declared in their evaluation forms after the workshop. The session has attracted much interest among researchers: we have received far more applications than we could offer places.

We are therefore planning further RDM training sessions for researchers in Poland. Basing on the information collected through the workshop evaluation forms from the participants of this event, we hope to adjust the workshop scenario to the specific expectations of Polish researchers. Further training sessions will be run by staff members of the Open Science Platform.