RSEs as active contributors to build scientific communities around ORD

The meeting on “RSE, ORD, and DMP” was a big success! We discussed how RSEs can participate in Open Research Data, and what Data Management Plans can do for the engineers and the projects. For a lot of the RSEs present, DMP was a new acronym. But thanks to Gilles Dubochet from EPFL’s Open Science, and Chiara Gabella from the EPFL library, we got a better idea what DMPs are, and where they can help us.

Gilles Dubochet for the introduction.

After Gilles’ introduction, we split in four groups, in order to discuss the following subjects:

1. DMPs and ORD, share your experiments in your lab - the good, the bad, and the ugly.

TLDR: in the group, only 1 out of 4 RSE actually used a well-defined DMP. So while it helps, most RSEs are not aware of DMPs and how to use them!

Call to Action: read up on DMPs! Either EPFL guidelines or DMP OPIDoR.

2. What does FAIR offer to research in general, and to ORD specifically, and where does it fall short?

TLDR: FAIR is very useful, but is not always easy to implement: specifically the Interoperable and Reproducible part is hard, and needs to be defined beforehand, how long it should hold.

Call to Action: define your FAIR principles beforehand!

3. What topics are RSEs working on at EPFL, and which of them are linked to ORD and need DMPs?

4. Search for successful non-EPFL communities in ORD and search for a common theme of success (and what about software?).

TLDR: While a community can grow organically from a small project, most often it’s funding from states which uphold the community and the servers. So it’s a mix of getting together the right people, and then finding the money :)

Call to action: Choose your community wisely