FAIR Research Data Management: Project Use Cases

These training materials are part of a five-part course aimed at early career researchers on FAIR Research Data Management (RDM). We share these materials so that research data professionals can reuse them in their instructions or training sessions.
The main theme of this course are the FAIR principles: sharing research data that are Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable.
The FAIR RDM course is intended to be flexible and modular: we invite users to (re)use and adapt those parts that are suitable for their audience.
Sessions 1-3 of this course are aimed at absolute beginners: that is, those who likely have knowledge of research processes in general but are new to research data management and the FAIR principles. Sessions 4-5 are aimed at an intermediate level: those who have completed the first three modules and/or already have some existing knowledge of FAIR RDM.

To facilitate project based learning, eight documents with use cases and exercises were created for and used during the 'FAIR Research Data Management' 5-session course (beginner and intermediate level). The course was developed and piloted as part of the PATTERN project (https://www.pattern-openresearch.eu/).

Project work was conducted on the Projects platform (https://pattern.projects.directory/). Instructors asked learners to do some exercises that are based on real research projects that produced and archived data some time in the past.  Eight 'use cases' were created, and participants chose one that mached their interests to work on for the duration of the course. 

Each use case project consists of 5 assignments that are aligned with the five training sessions, and they worked on these assignments between the weekly training sessions, with check in group discussions held during each session:

• Assignment 1: FAIRness of data (completed after Session 1, discussed in Session 2)
• Assignment 2: Project DMP (completed after Session 2, discussed in Session 3)
• Assignment 3: Project documentation (completed after Session 3, discussed in Session 4)
• Assignment 4: Data Repository (completed after Session 4, discussed in Session 5)
• Assignment 5: Policy and practice (completed during/after Session 5)

File overview:

2024_ProjectUseCase1_Pattern_FAIR_RDM - Project 1: The history of cat ownership

2024_ProjectUseCase2_Pattern_FAIR_RDM - Project 2: Open Science Practices

2024_ProjectUseCase3_Pattern_FAIR_RDM - Project 3: Phytoplankton in the Northwest Adriatic Sea

2024_ProjectUseCase4_Pattern_FAIR_RDM - Project 4: The evolutionary origin Altai Falcon

2024_ProjectUseCase5_Pattern_FAIR_RDM - Project 5: The role of septin proteins in skeletal muscle regeneration

2024_ProjectUseCase6_Pattern_FAIR_RDM - Project 6: Diversity in Activities of Daily Living (ADL)

2024_ProjectUseCase7_Pattern_FAIR_RDM - Project 7: Iron Age rock art

2024_ProjectUseCase8_Pattern_FAIR_RDM - Project 8: Sediment remediation

2024_ProjectUseCaseOverview_Pattern_FAIR_RDM: Instructions and overview of use cases and project work

Each document is provided in .docx and .pdf format