Last week, in November 2023, a meeting of IDea_Lab and participants of the RDM exchange within the BMBWF project Shared RDM Services & Infrastructure took place. The IDea_Lab of the University of Graz welcomed the group of employees from research data management and research support from various Austrian universities to a science brunch.

Initially, the IDea_Lab presented given focus points around interdisciplinary research, digital transformation, artificial intelligence and big data, organizationally divided into the so-called Methods_Lab and the Data_Lab. A professorship for AI ethics has already been filled, further professorships for machine learning methods and data analysis have been confirmed for 2024, and a certificate course for data stewards at UNI for LIFE, the University of Graz’s further education organization, will also start next year. As a networking platform, the aim is to bring science and digital transformation closer to society.

This was followed by an exchange including a short questionnaire on various research data manager issues. Experiences and ideas were discussed on how researchers could better experience the topic of RDM, which research areas frequently receive inquiries about RDM, or which RDM key points are considered particularly important individually. The terms FAIR and open were mentioned most frequently, with the majority mentioning that data management plans should be known or practiced by all researchers alongside data organization as a core aspect of RDM. Among all participants in the RDM exchange group, the research field of physics was most frequently mentioned as having inquiries or interest in RDM topics, followed by the natural sciences. Almost unanimously, the focus is on personal discussions with researchers in order to reach them with RDM topics or to make a difference. These can take place as part of events, workshops or individual visits. The most frequent requests and statements from researchers at the various institutions to those involved were also surveyed, with the most frequent question being: “How much does it cost?” or “What is the benefit?”, followed by the request for a pre-filled DMP template. Finally, individual stories were told about positive experiences around RDM support activities, individual successes, or appreciative feedback.