FLI Knowledge Transfer File (KTF) for Researcher Offboarding

Context

This Knowledge Transfer File (KTF) was created to support the offboarding of wet-lab researchers of the Leibniz Institute on Aging - Fritz Lipmann Institute (FLI) (RORID: 039a53269), thus it assumes that they used the internal electronic lab notebook (ELN) and produced digital and analogous (meta)data (incl. samples and reagents).

It was adapted from: Harvard Longwood Medical Area Research Data Management Working Group. “Knowledge Transfer File Template (PDF)” Retrieved 2025-01-20. https://osf.io/pw7ed/files/c7xmv.

Purpose

This document is intended to record important data resources and lab materials used in research. When a team member is leaving the group/lab, this form helps to transition these resources and processes to other group/lab members. The documentation collected should include annotation of important data location details, usage information, and referencing additional sources as needed. KTFs are an invaluable resource to navigate a team’s work and quickly look up where things are stored and who has access.

Properly protecting research data and materials is a fundamental obligation, grounded in the values of Good Research Practice (see FLI GRP guidelines), stewardship, integrity, and commitments to the providers and sources of the data and reagents.

Contents

• Team and researcher information
• Deadlines
• About the KTF (Purpose, Usage, Imprint, History)
• Checklist
• Tables/text fields with explanations for:
  1. Projects, funding, collaborators
  2. Data documentation
  3. Data location and organization
  4. Published and/or publicly shared data, tools, reagents, and organisms
  5. Unpublished manuscripts, data, and tools
  6. Additional files and documentation
  7. Laboratory materials
  8. Comments

Usage Notes

• The KTF collects info on all projects of an researcher at once (instead of providing a file for each individual project). 
• The pdf form is intended to be given to researchers for filling out.

Upload Content

We provide the KTF in three formats: