Parent Projects in RDMO

To ensure good and standardized research data management (RDM) in projects, RWTH Aachen University promotes the use of data management plans (DMPs). Managing DMPs becomes increasingly challenging beyond a certain project size, and they must be handled in the same way as all other processes in the project. To streamline workflows and avoid redundant work steps, it is recommended that all project participants use the same tool to process DMPs, providing project coordinators and data stewards access to their entries. This paper highlights the value of utilizing a data management plan tool, specifically the Research Data Management Organiser (RDMO), by demonstrating its effectiveness in organizing RDM through three large-scale projects. The projects presented include the German Research Foundation (DFG) SPP 2419, Hydrogen-based fuel Combustion using Additive Manufacturing Priority Program; the DFG Cluster of Excellence Fuel Science Center; and the DFG Cluster of Excellence Internet of Production. Each project employs between 50 and 200 project members. Therefore, the respective needs and restrictions regarding accessibility and information flow within the project members are decisive for the data management requirements. Apart from general opportunities to work on DMPs and to engage in collective work on related projects, the RDMO offers the chance to link all projects within a research cluster under so-called ‘parent projects.’ Conceptually, these parent–child relations form a rooted tree: individual research projects correspond to leaves, intermediate parent projects group related subprojects, and a single top-level project serves as the root of the hierarchy. This integration helps ensure that those responsible for the research project are more effectively integrated into the researcher’s workflow when using DMPs. The parent project structure allows for the extraction of various details from a project-specific catalog. At the researcher level, it enables tracking work steps, implementing project guidelines, and monitoring their progress. At the project level, it serves as a link between researchers’ individual DMPs, helps identify shared responsibilities across multiple projects, and establishes general guidelines. At the highest level, there is a central project that consolidates all associated projects. At RWTH Aachen University, data stewards support and promote the use of the RDMO and the parent project functionality within their research clusters. They are typically the owners of the top-level project, overseeing the organization and the management of DMPs processing across the project. In this paper, various possible uses of the parent project functionality are analyzed, and general possibilities for the project-internal implementation of DMP processing are derived from this.