Since funders, university and publishers have strict requirements on responsible research data management, there is a great need for experts in the field who can advise and support researchers in a practical way. One of these experts is Mareike Boom.

Photographer: Daniel Boom

Mareike works at the Van Vollenhoven Institute of Leiden Law School as a data manager and staff member of the project team of ‘Getting to the Core of Crimmigration’, a NWO funded project led by Prof. dr. Maartje van der Woude. She also advises other researchers from the Van Vollenhoven Institute on data management issues. Mareike recently started a series of interesting blogposts entitled 'Research in fiction through the lens of data management'. Through the adventures of Alfred Issendorf, the protagonist of W.F. Herman’s wellknown Dutch novel ‘Beyond Sleep’, we get to know all aspects of research data management.

Advising Alfred – Applying the "data perspective"
August 29, 2018

In the novel “Beyond Sleep” the search for the aerial photographs did not go smoothly for the protagonist, the doctoral candidate in geology Alfred Issendorf. Let’s assume that for his fieldwork grant a data management plan would be required and Alfred would get advice in the planning stage of his research. Read more...

“Beyond Sleep” – The search for the aerial photographs
September 13, 2018

Data collection, analysis, publication and preservation have been core business of the academic world and its institutions for ages. Still, depending on one’s background, discussions about research data management could sound very new, strange, technical, fancy, confusing, ….or as a new layer of red tape. One might even forget the motivation and different reasons for doing it. Let’s leave all the policies, regulations, protocols, laws and IT projects aside for a moment and join Alfred Issendorf, the protagonist of the novel "Beyond Sleep", in his fieldwork and especially the search for existing data. Read more...

The F of findable – Searching for existing data
October 11, 2018

Researchers are increasingly asked to make their research data – where possible – available to others for further research in a way that the datasets are FAIR: findable, accessible, interoperable and re-usable. This policy focus implies that there are also still a lot of datasets – legacy data – that are not so easy to find or to re-use. If you are a researcher looking for existing data, which search strategies could you use? Read More...

Oops!….I didn’t prepare…
October 30, 2018

Which lessons about research data management and project management can we learn from the experiences of the doctoral candidate Alfred Issendorf, the protagonist of the novel “Beyond Sleep”? Read More...

Equipment don’t fail me now
January 31, 2019

When it comes to the tools of the trade for collecting and caring for research data, the doctoral candidate Alfred Issendorf, the protagonist of the novel “Beyond Sleep”, gets into an awkward situation. Which lessons could today’s PhD candidates learn from a fictional example from the 1960s? Read More...

“Beyond Sleep” – The orphaned notebook
February 07, 2019

The fictional fieldwork used as example in this blog series depicts two research projects that have not been finalized for different reason. From a data management perspective one of the important questions would be: What happens to the collected data? Read More...

Research…When life gets in between
February 21, 2019

Even with the best planning and preparation research projects can still take unexpected turns. It is always possible that life comes in between the researcher and the project. How could good data management practice help to mitigate the effects of any (involuntary) interruptions? Which options are there for researchers to advance science even if they decide to not continue their projects? Read More...