Training courses – RDM Compas

The open science movement and the provision of reusable research data require specific skills – both for employees in research infrastructures and for researchers. The acquisition of these skills is an integral part of our training measures, with the aim of enabling infrastructure staff to meet the increasing technical and methodological requirements of research data management (RDM). At the same time, these skills are to be implemented in the methods curricula of all disciplines represented in KonsortSWD in order to prepare potential infrastructure employees specifically for this job profile.

RDM Compas is the central online platform of KonsortSWD, on which the teaching and information materials of the research data centers (RDC) are bundled and made available.

The platform comprises three components: the knowledge base, the training center and an advanced module that is integrated into the certificate course at TH Köln.

• The Knowledge Base is a comprehensive collection of informative articles on important aspects of generic and data type-specific FDM and data curation. The content is based on the typical data curation process steps of the Data Curation Lifecycle (Higgins, 2008).
• The Knowledge Base is supplemented by the FDM Training Center, which offers practice-oriented self-study courses and modules on the central processes of data curation. These enable the content conveyed in the Knowledge Base to be deepened.
• The advanced module – data curation and data management of sensitive data in research data centers (RDCs) – prepares future employees for working in the RDCs. This module was successfully launched in February 2025. Following the planned evaluation, the course will be revised and offered again. Based on the extensive expertise within the consortium, this module sends a strong signal to potential interested parties and helps to close the existing skills gap in the field of professional RDM and data curation.

To the RDM Compas