livMatS Research Data Management Concept with a focus on the didactic use of dtool

The Cluster of Excellence Living, Adaptive and Energy-autonomous Materials Systems (livMatS) develops novel, bioinspired materials systems that adapt autonomously to their environment and harvest clean energy from it. For sustainable progress with this mission, making research data findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable- FAIR - is essential. livMatS‘ research data management (RDM) concept builds upon the three RDM pillars of advocacy, support, and technical infrastructure. Advocacy means the promotion of RDM best practices with workshops, talks, and direct exchange. Support means helping affiliates with data management-related questions, in particular in creating solid data management plans. On the technical level, this involves the identification of suitable RDM services, platforms and tools. With disciplines like energy research, biomimetics, microsystems engineering, sustainability research, psychology and philosophy involved in livMatS, there cannot be a one-fits-all software solution. Instead, livMatS must keep close track of available external services and filter them based on their future perspective. Within the realm of chemistry, for example, the electronic lab notebook chemotion together with the chemotion repository is evolving towards a FAIR standard service ecosystem and was thus incorporated within the livMatS RDM concept. Next to the observation of and referral to such reliable (discipline-specific) external platforms, livMatS decided to promote a low-treshold decentralized data management ecosystem, dtool, and offer a livMatS-wide data repository based on bwSFS, the Baden-Württemberg- and DFG-funded S3 object Storage for Science. The intended purpose here is twofold: Firstly, livMatS offers an independent fallback service to go FAIR for any willing affiliate not provided with RDM guidance elsewhere. Secondly, dtool encourages the use of machine-readable metadata formats for data documentation and allows offering fillable templates adhering to specific schema, but does not enforce either. Eventually, the decision on how far to go in terms of FAIRness lies with each user and their choice of documentation standards. Hence, dtool and the livMatS data repository provide a didactic bridge between the status quo of completely standard-free data management at the individual level at one end and fully FAIR platform solutions with rigid metadata documentation requirements at the other end. Here, we introduce the advocacy, support, and technical infrastructure pillars of the livMatS RDM concept with a focus on dtool and its didactic use within workshops and hands-on sessions.