Recommendations from the Greening DH Working Group on the Resource-Efficient Management of Research Data

Sustainable research data management (RDM) is part of good scientific practice. It helps to ensure that research results are transparent and reusable, whilst avoiding duplication of effort as well as the unnecessary use of resources. At the same time, RDM itself requires resources. It is therefore important to carefully balance transparency and reusability against the effort required to achieve them. These recommendations support researchers in adopting a resource-efficient approach to data, hardware and software, and in documenting their decisions in data management plans. They suggest options for selecting suitable file formats, for considering and implementing interoperability, for versioning and describing data, and for defining usage scenarios, storage requirements and solutions for long-term archiving. The aim of the recommendations is to promote resource-efficient research practices without compromising the principles of RDM. Resource-efficient research data management broken down to six key points:1. Foster reuse: Choose data formats and software that allow data to be easily re-used.2. Manage versions based on need: Keep only versions that are necessary for the project and for traceability of information.3. Design metadata purposefully: Facilitate the discoverability and reuse of research data through consistent standards and thoughtfully designed metadata.4. Organise the use of project data efficiently: Tailor storage locations, access paths and data transfers to the actual needs.5. Plan data sharing and publication sustainably: Make data available in open formats and under free licences wherever possible.6. Manage long-term archiving consciously: Store only the data relevant to traceability and reuse in the long term and use existing reliable infrastructures for this purpose.