What do i do to start RDM?

Question

Where do i start my RDM?

Really... What comes first?

Answer 1

That is a very broad question. There are several great (generic) resources to get started with research data management. You may want to check out the introductory material at forschungsdaten.info or the training material on education.nfdi4ing.de.

Most universities or research institutions also have specialised departments providing research data services that can support your first steps in RDM.

Answer 2

Dear anonymous,

as TSchwetje points out - a very broad question.
What comes first? I would say that you should put up a research data management plan (there are templates available probably at your university or an example plan). In order to be able to fill that out properly, you have to define the sourceof your data, recognize the format, firgure out, where to store the data physically and think about how to make the data FAIR. A metadata ontology should also be selected (an other example here)

Regards,
cstemmer

Answer 3

The very first start is thinking ....

There is also a very nice poster/workshop you can start with:

From a data inventory to a data management plan (DMP)

by Grünwald, Katharina Maria Elisabeth

^*https://doi.org/10.18154/RWTH-2023-10436

Here is a short description, what this is all about, in case you do the workshop: 

In the Data Management Plan (DMP) workshop, participants will gain an overview of the objectives of a DMP. They will learn how to approach a research project while considering research data management and the available infrastructure at their institution before initiating a new project. This approach is practical and can be applied directly: Step 1 involves creating a Data Inventory of the existing IT infrastructure of the institution and/or the specific field of study.
Step 2 consists of translating this Data Inventory into a DMP that also addresses the specific requirements of the respective project. We will introduce the DMP tool RDMO as an example since it is used at RWTH. However, the approach using the Data Inventory and the tool is agnostic and can be adapted to different systems.

The target group is those who are just starting a research project and are now confronted with a topic like research data management.