Two Years, Five Partners, Countless RDM Resources: The LEARN Project Summarised

The LEARN Project began in 2015 with a mission to raise awareness of the need for better Research Data  Management (RDM), and to help this process along by producing several resources to help institutions with their RDM needs.

Two years later, this EU-funded project with five partners has reached its official end point.

LEARN Project partners at our final meeting in London, May 2017. Image by LEARN, CC BY.

We’re proud of the many resources we’ve provided to the community in that time. They include a Toolkit of Best Practice for Research Data Management (including a model RDM Policy), an RDM Readiness Survey and 20 Best-Practice Recommendations for RDM (to name just a few). In addition we’ve held a string of events around Europe and in South America, culminating with our Final Conference in London on 5 May 2017. Feedback from participants at that Conference was very positive, and rewarding to hear. Comments included:

I sometimes feel the problem is so big I don’t know where to start – the toolkit gives a framework for assessing strengths and weaknesses, which can then be used to prioritise actions.

The toolkit, and the experience and support gained in the project, give me authority and information to help me develop a principle-based service.

The Conference and Project outputs have helped me as an assessment tool by which to measure my University’s position in the landscape of Open Research Data Management

It has given me insight into the variety of preparedness for RDM, and how across research organisations, researchers and nations there are different levels of maturity. This is useful in my role as a national actor in terms of setting directions with stakeholders to move research data management forward.

What’s Next?

In the coming month, we’ll be working on finishing the final reports related to the project and on presenting our results at a final review with the European Commission at the end of June. After that, we’ll turn our attention to a proposal for a follow-up project to LEARN, which we hope will deliver even more value for everyone interested in Research Data Management.

Our Final Survey

If you’ve followed the work of LEARN, or used our resources, we’d love your feedback on the project. Please take our Final Survey.

Thank You!

Finally, let us say Thank You to everyone who’s participated in or contributed to the work of LEARN over the past two years. We greatly appreciate all of your feedback, efforts and contributions, and we hope to work with you again in the future.

 

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