READ ME

Research Data Management for Agrosystem Sciences - Modular Training Material for Reuse

!Disclaimer!

This git repo is still unter construction. You can find the first ready to use version of our modular training material on zenodo or Publisso FRL.

Authors

• Sophie Boße (ORCID: 0009-0002-6461-8291) [1a]
• Elena Rey Mazón (ORCID: 0000-0003-4813-5927) [2b]
• Wahib Sahwan (ORCID: 0000-0002-6503-5525) [3c]
• Lea Sophie Singson (ORCID: 0009-0004-9978-8703) [4d]
• Lucia Vedder (ORCID: 0000-0002-8924-9800) [5e]

1. ZB MED - Information Centre for Life Sciences
2. Leibniz-Institut für Pflanzengenetik und Kulturpflanzenforschung (IPK) Gatersleben
3. Leibniz-Zentrum für Agrarlandschaftsforschung (ZALF) e.V.
4. Leibniz-Zentrum für Informationsinfrastruktur (FIZ) Karlsruhe
5. Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn

• a Overall concept and content responsibility
• b Contents responsibility for the following topics: 00_Welcome, 01_Researchdatamanagement, 04_FAIR-Principles, 08_DataCollection
• c Contents responsibility for the following topics: 07_DataManagementPlan, 10_Publication
• d Contents responsibility for the following topics: 02_GoodResearchPractice, 03_ResearchPolicies, 11_LegalAspects
• e Contents responsibility for the following topics: 05_DataOrganisation, 06_DataDocumentation

Version

This is Version 1.0.

Citation

Boße, S., Rey Mazón, E., Sahwan, W., Singson, L.S., Vedder, L. (2026): Research Data Management for Agrosystem Sciences - Modular Training Material for Reuse (1.0), DOI: https://doi.org/10.4126/FRL01-006527953

Persistent Identifier

DOI: 10.4126/FRL01-006527953

Acknowledgements

Many of the slides are based on templates and prior work by Justine Vandendorp. We gratefully acknowledge her contributions to the development of these materials.

We also extend our sincere thanks to Hafssa Zainou and Anna Schlimbach for their valuable assistance in the structuring and formatting of the materials.

This work was created as part of the NFDI consortium FAIRagro (www.fairagro.net). We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the German Research Foundation (DFG) – project number 501899475.

License

This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0:

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

Image credits are always indicated in the slides.

If multiple images are used on one slide, licenses are listed in reading order: From top left to bottom right.

Discipline

Agrosystem Science Research

Language

English

Description

This is an extensive Open Educational Resource (OER) comprising training materials designed to help you plan, create and conduct training events on Research Data Management (RDM) for agrosystem science researchers.

These resources include presentation slides, presenter notes, teaching scripts with learning objectives, worksheets and a recording of an RDM training session, as well as a guide on how to create a training session.

All resources are structured and described in accordance with the EduBrick concept, whereby the teaching resources are broken down into the smallest didactic unit, called 'Bricks', which can be used to create targeted learning/teaching units for training events tailored to the respective needs.

To enhance reusability, all materials are provided in open format in our git repo, as well as in multiple formats on zenodo or Publisso FRL and are openly licensed.

We also provide an example of how the Bricks could be used to create a four-hour online training course, including a teaching script, presentation slides, worksheets and a video recording of the training course.

Keywords

Research Data Management, Open Educational Resource, EduBricks, Agrosystem Science Research, FAIRagro, Training material

Target Group

The target group of this resource are RDM professionals, data stewards, and teachers in agrosystem science, who want to conduct discipline-specific RDM training for researchers within the agrosystem sciences.

Intended Use

This publication is designed to:

• Enable flexible reuse and recombination
• Support trainers in different institutional contexts
• Facilitate adaptation to specific target groups
• Encourage collaborative use without structural modification

The modular design ensures that content can be tailored to specific formats, disciplines, and levels of expertise while maintaining didactical coherence.

Content

This publication includes:

• READ ME file (md, pdf)
• “How to create a training” Guide (md, pdf)
• Bricks_Libreoffice: presentation slides as odp, teaching script as ods, worksheets as odt
• FAIRagro Example Training: Slides (odp), Teachingsscript (ods), Worksheets (odt) and Recording (mp4) of an four hour example training session

In this git repo just libre office formats are included. If you want to work with microsoft office or pdf, please see the publication of Version 1.0 on zenodo or Publisso FRL.

Slide Design and Visual Structure

To ensure clarity and usability across contexts, the slides follow a consistent visual logic:

Color Coding

There is a coloured mark in the top right corner of every slide:

• Petrol – Generic content (discipline-independent RDM topics)
• Light green – Agrosystem-specific content
• Red-orange – Interactive content (exercises, discussions, reflection prompts)

Logo Usage

The FAIRagro logo appears only:

• On title slides
• On section divider slides

This deliberate limitation facilitates reuse in collaborative contexts, as cooperating institutions do not need to include their logos into every slide.

Concept of Modularity

The training material is designed as a modular system. It is inspired by the concept of “EduBricks” of the National Research Data Infrastructure Section Education & Training (Brilhaus et al., 2025).

Bricks – The Smallest Didactic Unit

All content is broken down into individual “bricks”, which represent the smallest didactic unit.

A brick may contain:

• Generic content
• Discipline-specific content
• Interactive elements

Each brick:

• Has its own learning objective(s), which are taken from or adapted from the learning objectives matrix for research data management (Petersen et al., 2025)
• Has a unique ID
• Consists of presentation slides with detailed speaker notes
• May include additional materials (e.g. worksheets)

Bricks are stored in topic-based folders.

Many bricks can be used in both online and in-person formats. Where necessary, format-specific variants are provided and clearly marked.

From Bricks to Units to Disseminations

The modular structure enables flexible recombination:

• Bricks → combined into thematic Units (via didactic learning paths)
• Units → combined into a Dissemination (i.e. a full training session)

The composition depends on:

• Target group
• Training format
• Available time
• Learning objectives

Folder Structure

The folder structure within the Brick_Libreoffice folder reflects the thematic organization and numbering logic.

For the best display, we recommend sorting by name, regardless of file type.

The following topics and subtopics are included in the folder structure:

• 00_Welcome

  • 00_Welcome_Teachingscript
  • 00-01_Titel
  • 00-02_FAIRagro
  • 00-03_AboutThisCourse
  • 00-04_Agenda
  • 00-05_Icebreaker
  • 00-06_ResearchJourney_Slides

• 01_Researchdatamangement

  • 01_Researchdatamanagement_Teachingscript
  • 01-01_Researchdata
    • 01-01-06_FileFormats
  • 01-02_Researchdatamanagement
  • 01-03_DataLifecycle

• 02_GoodResearchPractice

• 03_ResearchPolicies

• 04_FAIR-Prinzipien

• 05_DataOrganisation

  • 05-02_DataOrganisation_NamingConvention
  • 05-03_DataOrganisation_FolderStructure
  • 05-04_DataOrganisation_VersionControl

• 06_DataDocumentation

  • 06-01_DataDocumentation_Intro
  • 06-02_DataDocumentation_Types
  • 06-03_DataDocumentation_Metadaten
  • 06-04_DataDocumentation_Metadatenstandards
  • 06-05_DataDocumentation_SemanticWeb
  • 06-06_DataDocumentation_PersistentIdentifier
  • 06-07_DataDocumentation_ComputationalReproducibility

• 07_DataManagementPlan

  • 07-07_DataManagementPlan_Tools

• 08_DataCollection

  • 08-01_DataCollection_ElectronicLabNotebooks
  • 08-02_DataCollection_ElectronicFieldbooks
  • 08-03_DataCollection_DataReuse

• 09_DataStorage

• 10_DataPublication

  • 10-01_DataPublication_Sharing
  • 10-02_DataPublication_Repositories
  • 10-03_DataPublication_Data-Journals

• 11_LegalAspects

  • 11-00_LegalAspects_CaseStudy
  • 11-01_LegalAspects_Datarights
  • 11-02_LegalAspects_Dataprotection
  • 11-03_LegalAspects_BusinessSecrets
  • 11-04_LegalAspects_Nagoya
  • 11-05_LegalAspects_Structure

• 12_WrapUp

• Template_Teachingscript

• FAIRagro_Example_Training

  • Worksheets - LinksToShare
  • Recording - Slides
  • Teachingscript - Announcement

• HowToCreateATraining

• README

ID Nomenclature

Each brick follows a consistent ID structure:

XX-XX-XX-XXx

This corresponds to the numbers of:

TOPIC_SUBTOPIC_SUBSUBTOPIC_BRICKvariant

• The number of subtopics varies.
• The numerical structure reflects the thematic hierarchy.
• Variants (e.g., online vs. in-person) are marked with a lowercase letter (e.g., a, b).
• The ID is included in the file name.
• The ID links directly to the detailed description in the corresponding Teachingscript.

The Teaching Script

Each main topic folder contains a teaching script.

For every brick, the teaching script provides:

• ID
• Topic
• Subtopic
• Learning objective(s)
  • Adapted from the learning objectives matrix for research data management (Petersen et al. 2025)
• Content description
• Intended duration
• Suggested timeline (including the time by which the topic should be completed)
• Format (Form of content delivery e.g. Brainstorming, Discussion, Exercise, Presentation)
• Required materials
• Additional comments
• Didactic concept (“breathing in and breathing out”)

Didactic Concept: Breathing In and Breathing Out

The pedagogical approach alternates between:

• Breathing in – Phases of information input
• Breathing out – Phases of reflection, discussion, or active engagement

A well-designed training alternates these phases to maintain attention and support knowledge consolidation. (Biernacka et al.)

How to Assemble a Training Session

The file HowToCreateATraining provides a step-by-step guide on how to:

• Define the training format
• Create the content structure
• Select appropriate bricks
• Adapt content to format and audience
• Design and deliver a coherent training session

Example Training

An example of a four hour training format, based on this modular training material, is included.

For this example the following materials are included:

• Teaching script
• Presentation slides
• Worksheets
• Link collection to share with participants
• Announcement text
• Recording of the non-interactive parts of a training delivered by FAIRagro Data Stewards

References

• Biernacka, Katarzyna, et al. “Train-the-Trainer-Konzept zum Thema Forschungsdatenmanagement.” Zenodo, 14 Dec. 2023. DOI.org (Datacite), https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.1215376.
• Brilhaus, Dominik, et al. “One Resource to Teach Them All.” Proceedings of the Conference on Research Data Infrastructure, vol. 1, Sept. 2023. DOI.org (Crossref), https://doi.org/10.52825/cordi.v1i.267.
• Petersen, Britta, et al. Learning Objectives Matrix on the Topic of Research Data Management (RDM). July 2025. DOI.org (Datacite), https://doi.org/10.5281/ZENODO.15846806.