Introduction to Research Data Management
Objectives
💡 You know what reproducibility is.
💡 You can argue why reproducibility is essential for research.
💡 You recognize the importance of research data management (RDM).
💡 You can explain why RDM is relevant for reproducibility and reuse of data.
💡 You can define reproducibility and explain its relationship to RDM.
Exercises
Exercise 1: Common challenges of research data management
To learn more about the importance of good data management, watch the video Data Sharing and Management Snafu in 3 Short Acts by Hanson et al. (2019) from NYU Health Sciences Library on the common challenges researchers face with data sharing and management. It highlights the importance of good data management practices for ensuring data can be easily found, understood, and used by others.
Your task: Watch the video and discuss aspects that went wrong.
Slides
To export the slides to PDF, do the following:
- Toggle into Print View using the E key (or using the Navigation Menu).
- Open the in-browser print dialog (CTRL/CMD+P).
- Change the Destination setting to Save as PDF.
- Change the Layout to Landscape.
- Change the Margins to None.
- Enable the Background graphics option.
- Click Save.
Note: This feature has been confirmed to work in Google Chrome, Chromium as well as in Firefox.
Here’s what the Chrome print dialog would look like with these settings enabled:
These instructions were copied from the Quarto documentation (MIT License) and slightly modified.
Resources
Dear course participant,
You are receiving this email because you are registered for the two-day course “Research Data Management for Psychology and Neuroscience”, taking place on February 5th & 6th 2026, 9:30 to 16:30 at University of Hamburg, RTG 2753: Emotional Learning and Memory (Room 4099). We are excited that you will be attending this course and look forward to exploring the world of research data management with you!
To be able to implement the hands-on exercises, please bring your laptop to the course!
To tailor the course to your prior experience and needs, we have prepared a survey with a few questions. Please complete the survey before the course. This will give us sufficient time to review your responses before our first session.
The survey can be accessed here: https://rdm-course.formr.org.
A few technical notes about the survey: The survey will ask you for two codewords: a personal codeword and a course codeword.
The personal codeword is used to associate your responses with a unique identifier. This allows us to identify and relate your responses across all surveys used in the course while ensuring anonymity. By providing a personal codeword, you enable us to draw more detailed insights from your responses that will help us improve the course for you. The survey will contain an explanation at the beginning on how to generate your personal codeword.
The course codeword is used to tag your responses as coming from a course participant at University of Hamburg, RTG 2753: Emotional Learning and Memory.
The course codeword is: -------- (course password will be announced during the course).
Please note that you may be asked for the codewords repeatedly. This is not an error in the survey but the result of combining separate smaller surveys into a longer one. If this happens, please simply enter the personal and course codeword again. Also, please don’t be confused by any mention of a course on “Version Control”.
Further information about the course can be found on our course website at https://lennartwittkuhn.com/rdm-course/.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact us directly via email.
We look forward to seeing you at the course!
Best regards,
Lennart Wittkuhn (Instructor) and the organizing team