UNIVERSITY OF COLOGNE

The Love Data Week will take place again in 2024 during the week of Valentine's Day from February 12-16 and, as usual, offers a diverse, international program.
The local programme at the UoC is organized in cooperation with C³RDM, the USB and the DCH.

As part of the new USB Coffee Lectures "33 minutes for ... Artificial Intelligence" via Zoom, our newest C³RDM member Dr. Denis Arnold presented virtual assistants for generating codes using AI.

C³RDM members Florian Willems and Dr. Jan Breder organized a world café on the topic "How to Decolonize Research Data " at SciDataCon / International Data Week 2023 in Salzburg. As part of another session on Data Stewards / Comeptence Centers / Trainings, Dr. Jens Dierkes participated with a contribution to NFDI4Health - Data Stewards and FAIR data training in biomedical research in cooperation with colleagues from the ZB Med.

On March 7, the Cologne LZA meeting took place at the ITCC with participants from the NRW archive community. Florian Willems (deputy speaker C³RDM) presented the existing RDS.NRW, the state's research data repository, which was implemented as part of DH.NRW.

In addition, a detailed outlook was given on the second stage, which has just been applied for and where concepts of long-term archiving and the storage of data with special protection requirements are anchored in the concept from the outset.

The Love Data Week took place from 13–17 February 2023 with a diverse and international program. These were the Cologne contributions.

For more information on the Germany-wide program: https://forschungsdaten.info/fr/fdm-im-deutschsprachigen-raum/deutschland/love-data-week/

Organized by the C³RDM in cooperation with the USB and the DCH.

In her presentation "Research Data Management – from data management plan to repository" as part of the D7 event series "Fit for research funding" on January 26, Jasmin Schenk gave an overview of the requirements for the systematic management of research data in projects and the local services offered by the Cologne Competence Center for Research Data Management (C³RDM).

C³RDM invites researchers from the UoC who are involved in consortia of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) to an informal networking meeting. We want to talk about topics that affect us across consortia (community engagement, user research, training, etc.).

Organized by the C³RDM in cooperation with the DCH and the Institute for Biomedical Informatics.

As part of the USB Coffee Lectures via Zoom, C³RDM member Dr. Andreas Mühlichen and USB colleague Dr. Gabriele Schwiertz will present 11 tips on how the open source bibliography software Zotero can be used for collaborative and (partially) automated work, for example.

Following the motto "Lighthouse RDM – orientation in the sea of data", the second Research Data Day in NRW offers a full-day program with presentations by researchers on their experiences with the topic of RDM as well as contributions from the participating locations. Registration for the morning program takes place directly via the state initiative fdm.nrw. In the afternoon, events will be held at various universities in NRW, for which you can register at the respective locations. C³RDM is taking part with two public lectures and an internal workshop. Further information

As part of the USB Coffee Lectures via Zoom, C³RDM member and USB Head of Research and Publication Support Ralf Depping gave a lecture on "Secondary Publication Rights and Creative Commons Licenses".

The granting of CC licenses also plays a role in the publication of research data and Ralf Depping has published a handout "Legal aspects of Research Data Management".

Our expert for RDM training Dr. Andreas Mühlichen gave a lecture as part of the USB Coffee Lectures via Zoom on the topic "Everything so nice and tidy here – Filenaming & Folderstructure briefly explained".

As part of the new series of events, the USB will present practical topics in short lectures every Thursday at 2 pm during the winter semester 2022/23, which can be discussed afterwards.

At the second Data Champions Meet Up on September 8, 2022, Jasmin Schenk gave a short input on writing Data Management Plans (DMP).

In addition, upcoming events such as the USB Coffee Lectures and the NRW Research Data Day were announced and the content and formats of future meetings were discussed.

The slide set of the event including the introduction to data management plans can be found here.

Wann: 22. June 2022, 3 - 4:30 p.m.

Wo: virtual

Inhalt: This information event addresses all researchers at the Faculty of Medicine & UKK. During your daily research routine, digital research data occur in different amounts and forms (e. g. measuring data, pictures, videos, DNA-sequences etc.). What possibilities do exist to store and archive research data in a secure and sustainable manner to process the data further? Meet the contact persons and get to know useful services supporting you during all phases of the research process.

Registration link for the online event: https://t1p.de/eyxuq

This event is jointly organized by C³RDM and the Faculty of Medicine IT Coordination.

Department 72 of the Division 7 Research Management and C³RDM invite you to a two-hour virtual workshop on the handling of research data in Collaborative Research Centres (CRCs) on March 30th at 10 am - the event will be held in English and registration is already open.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) funds the solutions for sustainable handling of research data obtained in CRCs in the form of sub-projects on information management and information infrastructure. The workshop will focus on consultation and support services at the UoC for CRCs at every stage from an early pre-proposal phase to the development of infrastructures. We will provide you with an overview of the DFG requirements, services offered by D7, USB, and RRZK, as well as providing examples of successful INF projects.

The C³RDM Data Champions programme continued with an interactive workshop. Together with interested UoC researchers and RDM experts, we identified and discussed topics for subsequent network meetings. How can we build a network of practice together and effectively benefit from mututal exchange of experiences? Which event formats are suitable for which topics?

In December 2021 C³RDM invited UoC members interested in research data management and networking to participate in the initial workshop of the Data Champions* Network. The intention of this two hour online-workshop was to introduce the concept behind the programme and kick-off with a keynotes in two parts: Prof. Dr. Oya Beyan (UzK, Institute for Medical Informatics) and  Dr. Leyla Jael García Castro (ZB MED, Team Leader Semantic Technologies) talked about the opportunities and challenges of Open Science as well as the FAIR principles.

The introduction to legal aspects of research data management (in German) has been updated and, among other things, expanded to include the new regulations on data mining:

Depping, Ralf ORCID: 0000-0003-2537-7229 (2021). Rechtliche Aspekte des Forschungsdatenmanagements (Zweite überarbeitete und erweiterte Fassung ). Arbeitspapier.

Provided by the Professional Center, Florian Willems (Dep. Coordinator of C³RDM and CEO of Tektonix GmbH), Gesa Diekmann (lawyer and data protection officer of the University of Cologne), and Irmgard Bloemenkemper (Research associate at RRZK) teach the technical and legal basics of "data management in a digitalised world of work" based on practical applications.

C³RDM published a new introduction to legal aspects of research data management with a focus on intellectual property rights and data protection:

Depping, Ralf ORCID: 0000-0003-2537-7229 (2021). Rechtliche Aspekte des Forschungsdatenmanagements Eine Einführung. Arbeitspapier.

For the implementation of a professional FDM, different approaches are chosen at German universities, which are oriented towards the respective university-specific needs and organisational structures/cultures. This often involves reinventing the wheel instead of building on existing and reusable solutions. The development and the establishment of university-wide FDM structures can be made more effective and efficient if existing FDM institutions network with each other, cooperate and exchange their accumulated experience/materials. To this end, the GO UNI Implementation Network (as a national chapter of the Data Stewardship Competence Centre IN) was founded under the umbrella of the international GO FAIR initiative. An Implementation Network is a consortium committed to the FAIR principles and actively engaged in the field of FDM and Open Science.

The virtual kick-off workshop of GO UNI took place on 8 October 2020. Participants of 28 different scientific institutions took part. Since the content of GO UNI was to be defined and shaped from within the German community, an essential part of the workshop was a barcamp slot. In this slot, all participants had the opportunity to decide for themselves in which format and about which content, needs and competences they wanted to discuss. A better networking of the actors and an overview of the activities of the national and international RDM initiatives were identified as essential needs of the German RDM community. The next steps of GO UNI will be defined in a newly founded GO UNI core team and initial solutions will be developed in close cooperation with the RDM community.

For the future of an international culture of open research data, 160 top international universities are committed to Open Research Data, including German U15 as the representative body of the fifteen leading medical and research universities in Germany. In the Sorbonne Declaration, the associations advocate that research data should comply with the FAIR principles (findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable) and be made as openly accessible and reusable as possible. To this end, governments are called upon to "create the necessary political and legal framework for open research data and to provide the necessary resources for the technological infrastructure and research data management".

With today's deadline for the submission of letters of intent, the consortia for the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) are getting shape. In order to bundle expertise on the campus and for future exchange on cross-cutting topics, the Vice Rector for Research and Innovation Prof.'in Bettina Rockenbach invited to an information and networking event. The event was initiated and organised on 28 June by the Competence Area III - Quantitative Modeling of Complex Systems (CA III), the Cologne Center for Data and Simulation Science (CDS), the Cologne Center for eHumanities (CCeH) / Data Center for the Humanities (DCH), and by the Cologne Competence Center for Research Data Management (C³RDM).
"Vision, goals and challenges of the NFDI" were vividly explained in the introductory lecture by Dr. Ania López (Landesinitiative NFDI, DH-NRW). Afterwards, the numerous representatives of NFDI initiatives of the University of Cologne took the opportunity to present their respective projects and their role within the consortia. The presentations and a round of discussions were followed by an informal part with refreshments and many stimulating conversations - all in the spirit of a successful networking event.

Monika Linne from C³RDM presented the concept for a new implementation network "GO UNI" under the umbrella of the GO FAIR initiative at the international GO CHANGE workshop in Frankfurt am Main on 19 June. The primary goal is a mutual support for the development and establishment of university-wide structures for a professional research data management.

Representatives of the UzK (C³RDM and DCH) took part in the 8th WissKom Conference at the Central Library of Forschungszentrum Jülich and seize the opportunity for professional exchange on questions of research data management. The conference programme included topics such as strategies, structures, experiences, training and further education concepts and lessons learned as well as a keynote lecture by Dr. Ania López (project leader LNFDI DH-NRW / UB Duisburg-Essen) on an "FDM utopia".

⮞ conference proceedings

⮞ C³RDM poster

Birte Lindstädt (ZB MED) and Dr. Jens Dierkes (C3RDM) gave a joint lecture on the challenges of research data management in medicine at the C.A.S.E. lecture series of the Faculty of Medicine.

The  participants were particularly interested in legal questions and the presented tools and services, such as the creation of data management plans with RDMO4Life and the use of Electronic Laboratory Books (ELN).

⮞ Link to presentation

The cooperation between the institutional Competence Center C³RDM and the subject-specific Cologne Data Center for the Humanities DCH of the University of Cologne was the topic of a joint lecture at the DINI/nestor workshop "Developing Structures: Organisation and Governance for Local RDM Services" on the 3rd and 4th of April in Siegen.

Patrick Helling (DCH) and Dr. Jens Dierkes (C³RDM) explained the current and future levels of cooperation and the resulting benefits for the establishment of a cross-university FDM expert network.

The C³RDM team presented a poster on the concept of an RDM competence network at the University of Cologne at the E-Science Days in Heidelberg.

The challenges of institutional research data management in this complex socio-technological environment with many different stakeholders were discussed. FDM structures that have evolved over time must be taken into account, expertise should be bundled and sustainable cooperation structures established.

C³RDM was represented with two contributions at this year's Library Congress in Leipzig. On March 18, Dr. Jens Dierkes presented the concept for Interdisciplinary, complex research data management using the example of the University of Cologne in the session on "content curation". Research data management in the humanities at the University of Cologne was the topic of a joint presentation by C³RDM and the Data Center for the Humanities (DCH) represented by Ralf Depping and Prof. Dr. Brigitte Mathiak at a working session of the regional libraries at the dbv on the 19th of March.

At the Research Conference of the Graduate School of Geosciences (GSGS) the C³RDM team presented itself with a poster on research data management, answered questions and welcomed the opportunity for professional exchange.

Survey on the handling of research data at the University of Cologne

The newly founded Cologne Competence Center for Research Data Management (C³RDM) of the University of Cologne is addressing the question of what a future storage infrastructure for research data could look like. In cooperation with the BMBF-funded project UNEKE, the C³RDM therefore conducts a survey on storage practices and storage requirements for research data at the University of Cologne aimed at researchers from all disciplines.

Objective: The aim of the survey is to determine practices, needs, wishes, but also reservations from a scientific point of view regarding the storage of research data at the University of Cologne. Your answer will enable the C³RDM to better plan new services and infrastructures and make them available to you.

The C³RDM team thanks all the participants for their support!

With the publication guidelines issued in October 2018, the University of Cologne is addressing its publishing researchers, including guest researchers and young academics.

As part of a postdoc networking event organized by the Faculty and Academic Staff Development Department, the newly founded Competence Center Research Data Management presents its services for scientists at the University of Cologne.

Dr. Jens Dierkes and Dr. Constanze Curdt publish an article about the feasibility study of the University of Cologne for the establishment of a university-wide systematic research data management (RDM).

Dr. Jens Dierkes and Dr. Constanze Curdt present the case study on research data management at the University of Cologne.

"Research Data in a Nutshell" is the title of the workshop on Doctoral Day at the Albertus Magnus Graduate Center (AMGC). The materials were published by Dr. Constanze Curdt, Dr. Jens Dierkes and Sonja Kloppenburg under the DOI 10.5281/zenodo.1173015.

Dr. Constanze Curdt and Dr. Jens Dierkes publish an article about the university-wide support for the management of research data in the IT-News of the University of Cologne.