How To: Good Scientific Practice

• C. Hillen
• Data , RDM , good scientific practice

“Scientific integrity forms the basis for trustworthy research”, so it says in the Guidelines for Safeguarding Good Research Practice of the DFG, the German Research Foundation. As a major funder of research in Germany the DFG, as well as many other funders of research in Germany and the European Union, requires researchers to follow a certain set of rules conducting their research. These rules are called “good scientific practice” and have to be followed by researchers to be viable for funding. According to the guidelines researchers are required to “document all information relevant to the production of a research result as clearly as is required by and is appropriate for the relevant subject area to allow the result to be reviewed and assessed”. But good scientific practice is not done by documenting your research. It also includes i.a. protecting the personality rights of your subjects and handling research data in an appropriate manner by e.g. “back(-ing) up research data and results made publicly available, as well as the central materials on which they are based and the research software used, by adequate means according to the standards of the relevant subject area, and retain them for an appropriate period of time.” This is where Research Data Management (RDM) comes in. Of course RDM is much more than just creating a backup of your data on a USB-Stick and handing it over to anyone asking for it. “Good scientific practice” in RDM follows the FAIR principles:

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By DKZ.2R: Interactive Data Visualizations in Python

As part of our “Trainings” work package, the DKZ.2R creates, curates and presents a variety of free trainings, seminars and courses. Our next offering will be a half-day workshop on creating and presenting interactive visualizations in python, to be presented at RWTH Aachen University on 4th June, 2025. The workshop will cover data wrangling, creating interactive visualizations using Ploty, and deploying a small web application using Streamlit.

Workshop material is available online and will be presented by instructors who will walk you through the steps and are available for questions throughout the event. The event is open for participants from all domains, however a basic knowledge of Python is reccomended. If you are interested in taking part in the workshop, you can sign up here.

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By DKZ.2R: Intermediate Python Topics

As part of our “Trainings” work package, the DKZ.2R creates, curates and presents a variety of free trainings, seminars and courses. Our next offering will be a one day carpentries-style workshop on intermediate python, to be presented at RWTH Aachen University on the 19th of September, 2025. The workshop will cover the following topics:

• Virtual Environments
• Classes and Object Oriented Programming
• Inheritance and Composition
• Creating a Python Module
• Static Code Analysis
• Unit Testing
• Publishing a python package

Workshop material is available online and will be presented by instructors who will walk you through the steps and are available for questions throughout the event. If you are interested in taking part in the workshop, you can sign up here.

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