During the Love Data Week, some of the experts who developed the CESSDA Expert Tour Guide on Data Management, took an audience of 269 participants from 29 different countries on a short virtual tour (webinar) through the guide.

The audience was mainly European, with a large participation from Croatia (35%), the United Kingdom (22%) and Italy (11%). Participants were mostly Higher Education staff (61%) and undergraduate and postgraduate students (11%). Public, private and voluntary sector staff also attended. Participants from the social sciences, humanities and information sciences were most numerous, but the STEM disciplines were also represented.

When it comes to participants’ role in research data management, 29% identified themselves as researchers and 23% as trainers or as providing data support in research data management. Sixty-three participants showed an interest in planning to use the Expert Tour Guide for teaching and 102 participants for self-learning about good data management practices, either taking the complete tour or selected modules.

Half the participants had been informed about the webinar by a colleague or friend. The best promotion channels for this event were the UK Data Service and CESSDA ERIC websites, as well as various mailing lists (e.g. OpenAIRE, Jisc Research Data Management). Participants also found out about the webinar from social media such as Facebook and Twitter.

Suggestions made for improvements to the Tour Guide and for future webinars were:

• A more detailed walk-through the Tour Guide
• Short webinars on each of the chapters
• Specific examples to be included in the guide
• Similar training resources for STEM researchers
• Webinars on the implications of the EU GDPR for research

More information:

• Audience characteristics and feedback can be seen on Tableau Public
• Webinar presentation and video recording
• Expert Tour Guide on Data Management
• The Love Data Week