ZMT - Leibniz Zentrum für Marine Tropenforschung

Background

The livelihoods of many millions of people are currently threatened by overexploitation of natural resources, climate change and environmental pollution. These challenges can only be overcome through international cooperation and a comprehensive scientific data base.

Although the technical solutions for exchanging, securing and analyzing data already exist, research data is not readily available to the public.

DatAlumni conveys basics and background in research data management, so that research data are FAIR¹⁾ and contribute to a reproducible, understandable and accessible global data basis. Jointly with the ZMT Alumni, we want to identify data management challenges within the different disciplines and national infrastructures and develop strategies and strengths for the management of research data.

The ZMT Alumni become multipliers to promote the FAIR handling of data at their home institutes. The activities are supported by the digital ZMT initiative DigiZ.

¹⁾ Acronym FAIR stands for data that are findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable. Wilkinson, M. D., et al. (2016). "The FAIR Guiding Principles for scientific data management and stewardship." Scientific Data 3: 160018,  DOI:10.1038/sdata.2016.18.

 Measures

• Online Survey Data Management - see HERE the evaluation of our online survey on expertise, challenges and needs of ZMT Alumni

• Alumni Circle on Data Cooperation - see HERE the minutes of our digital kick-off workshop (September 2020), HERE you can find the minutes of our workshop in June 2021.

• Alumni Conference Data management and collaboration for tackling marine challenges, 16 - 17 March 2021
  

• Panel Discussion How can data management initiatives facilitate environmental sustainability in the tropics?
  

• #DatAlumni Course Series - "Time Series Analysis in R: A Case Study based on the Box-Jenkins Methodology" (7th, 14th, 21st and 28th May 2021), "Scientific surveys using Unmanned Aircraft Systems: 3D reconstruction of coastal environments" (9th and 22nd June 2021), "Introduction to Research Data Management: Why? When? How?" (15th and 29th June 2021), "Genomics: An introduction to genome sequencing, data processing and analysis" (6th and 7th July 2021) 

Resources for data management

• See HERE for the slides to Birte Pfeiffer's Introduction to Research Data Management course
• With your input from the Online Survey, we compiled HERE a list of data repositories and portals, which are relevant for research data of ZMT Alumni and staff. More data repositories for different disciplines: https://www.nature.com/sdata/policies/repositories
• Find free Massive Open Online Courses, also for data management and analysis https://www.classcentral.com
  This is a searchable portal for courses provided by Cousera, edx, FutureLearn and Udacity
• The Open University also provides various free online courses
• Three 20 minute videos introducing the principles of data management, FAIR principles and data management plan by the Danish e-Infrastructure Cooperation: https://vidensportal.deic.dk/en/RDMELearn
• Holmstrand, K.F., den Boer, S.P.A., Vlachos, E., Martínez-Lavanchy, P.M., Hansen, K.K. (Eds.) (2019). Research Data Management (eLearning course). doi: 10.11581/dtu:00000047
• More information on "How to FAIR": https://www.howtofair.dk/about/