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Survey results: Engineering-specific Data Management Planning

Data management plans (DMP) are an important component of data management. One of the goals of the NFDI4Ing Base Service Quality assurance in RDM processes and metrics for FAIR data (S-1) is to provide an engineering-specific customized Data Management Plan (DMP) template to support engineers.

Illustration by Ainsley Seago, CC BY 4.0

A Data Management Plan (DMP) is not only used for documentation, it can also support communication and the establishment of a structure in working groups, projects, etc., particularly during their early stages. One of the goals of the NFDI4Ing Base Service Quality assurance in RDM processes and metrics for FAIR data (S-1) is to provide an engineering-specific customized DMP template. To create a customized template specific to requirements in engineering, the NFDI4Ing Base Service collaborates internationally with the RDA Working Group Discipline-Specific Guidance for DMP. A key activity in 2021 was to design and conduct a survey that covers “the current state of disciplinary-specific data management practices, knowledge or service gaps and overlaps between disciplines” (read more).

In a first step, the NFDI4Ing Base Service S-1 uses the RDA survey to identify the engineering-specific contents and expand upon them in meetings of the NFDI4Ing special interest group (SIG) Quality Assurance and FAIR Metrics. The general evaluation of the survey is not yet finished, but we can share some preliminary results.

Results

The RDA WG DSGforDMP asked about the issue of licenses, and here we are very pleased to see that almost 64% of engineers give out licenses. Most of them are open licenses.

Fig. 1: Question about licenses in the online survey. D. Hausen, pre-published
Another example concerns metadata standards. Here it is very clear that many researchers do not yet use a metadata standard. Various reasons were given for this, e.g. lack of time, and expected restrictions due to complying with a standard. Some researchers also admitted that they lack knowledge or find it difficult to make a decision.
Fig. 2: Question about metadata standards in the online survey. D. Hausen, pre-published
At the SIG meetings, we first started with an assessment of the topics in order to narrow down more precisely what is relevant and should be focused on going forward.
Fig. 3: Cluster of relevant and comprehensive topics in a DMP template. Click to enlarge.
Derived from the clusters, we were able to ask for concrete examples of the focus topics in another meeting. This process is ongoing. The creation of the template is still in progress, but all these results will be incorporated as engineering specific aspects into the DMP template. We will make the engineering-specific DMP template available in the Research Data Management Organiser (RDMO) instance of NFDI4Ing as soon as possible.
Daniela Hausen together with
SIG Quality Assurance and FAIR Metrics
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