In the warm days of late June, the developing and implementing research data management training in a national and local level was presented to a wide international research library network at the LIBER annual conference, now organised online. The history of LIBER (Ligue des Bibliothèques Européennes de Recherche – Association of European Research Libraries) goes back to almost fifty years and annual conferences have been organised for 49 years in a row. Traditionally, LIBER has been especially favoured by library directors, but the conference is open for all.
One of the strategic objectives of LIBER is FAIR research data which made it a logical forum for presenting research data management issues. The theme of the talk “Integrating responsible research data management practices as part of a research workflow on a national and local level” focused on highlighting the national collaboration in developing research data management training, as well as local endeavours. Nationally, the open science coordination in Finland is supported by The Federation of Finnish Learned Societies, under which open science is promoted in different expert and working groups. One of the open science themes is focused on the openness of research data, and in 2019 a working group on Open Data Training was established. The aim of the group is to compile a national proposal for research data management training modules and focus groups and provide shared training opportunities and events for research data management trainers across organisational borders. People from the Data Service participate actively in the working group. The scale of the data trainings covers all aspects of good and responsible research data management, with target groups such as researchers, teachers, students. support staff and research funders. In addition, part of the training consists of train the trainer events and they are therefore focused on research data management professionals. The working group has already charted the different models for research data management training on different levels and organised a national training session on anonymisation together with the Finnish Social Science Data Archive (FSD).
Research data training is being actively developed in Tampere, too. Open science has been integrated into basic studies, as part of the mandatory Information Literacy studies provided by the Tampere University Library. Graduate students were a focus of a research data management pilot, organised in the beginning of 2020 with eight groups from Information Science, Nursing Science, and master’s degree Programme in Management of Health Care and Social Services in the University of Applied Sciences. Good research data management is an essential skill from the perspective of both studies and working life. In the future, research data management training in graduate studies will be more and more centred on the training of thesis supervisors so that they can, in turn, promote and teach these skills to the students. The training of thesis supervisors has already started in late 2019 and during spring 2020 the trainings have emphasised data protection, data security and data anonymisation.
The groups especially targeted in research data management training are PhD students and researchers. During PhD studies the research data management training is being produced with the Tampere University Doctoral School and the contents include data management and ethics, and data management practices in surveys and interviews. One larger target group is post-doctoral researchers and their systematic training will be developed in the organisation as part of a wider researcher development and skills training.
As a concluding remark, it is essential to identify and support different customer groups and their varying needs in developing research data management training. The seed for data management awareness should be sown early on to the students, as some will become the researchers of tomorrow. The students need support in order to learn and develop their skills (for working life too) and supporting their supervisors in identifying and teaching good and responsible data management practices is essential. The data management trainers have, for their part, a highly central role in creating, developing and promoting these practices. And if it is possible to carry out this work in wide national and international collaboration, do so!
