Building Open Science: Exploring Research Data with LEGO® (Workshop in English)

Open Science starts with your own data - and sometimes with a LEGO® brick

Transparent, traceable, and reusable research data are a central foundation of good scientific practice - and a key enabler of Open Science. At the same time, research data management remains abstract or difficult to grasp. This workshop addresses this issue: it provides guidance, lowers barriers to entry, and shows why it is important to handle research data consciously from an early stage.

You will explore key aspects of research data management – supported by LEGO® workshop elements. Through joint building, explaining, and discussing, topics such as reproducibility, documentation, metadata, data organization, and storage become visible and easy to reflect on. LEGO® serves as a thinking and communication tool to make complex relationships tangible and open up new perspectives on one’s own research practices.

You will also gain insights into available support services that can facilitate the handling of research data. However, the focus is on reflection, exchange, and raising awareness: How do structures emerge in one’s own work? Where do the challenges lie? What steps make research traceable and open in the long term? A special focus is placed on the publication of data and software — the central step in making research transparent, reusable, and open-data-compatible. 

The workshop does not provide ready-made solutions, but invites you to critically question your own handling of research data and to take away ideas and first practical skills for more conscious, well-structured practices.

For doctoral researchers who not only recognize open science as a goal, but are also curious about how they can shape their own path toward it – step by step.

Registration (workshop in English): via the HZDR Career Center

Please register by May 4, 2026.

This event is jointly organised by the Service Center Research Data, the competence team of SaxFDM and the Department of Information Services and Computing of the HZDR. Further dates can be found on the websites of SaxFDM and the Service Center Research Data.