“I care to make it FAIR” interview series

The campaign was based on semi-structured interviews with researchers from all eight faculties at TU Wien. We compiled the results of the interviews into news articles and published them gradually on the website of TU Wien’s Center for Research Data Management between October 2025 and April 2026, introducing the slogan “I care to make it FAIR”. 

To reach all TU Wien members, accompanying visuals were created for each news article and displayed on the university’s information screens. The images can also be found in the Use cases of our researchers section of our website. In addition to the slogan and a link to the news article, they feature a photo, a visualisation of original data from specific projects, and a statement from the researchers themselves on how the FAIR principles influence their data practices. Furthermore, in December 2025 and April 2026, summary news articles on the interviews were published on the TU Wien homepage and LinkedIn, which we were very pleased about.

What were the benefits?

The campaign proved to be a win-win for everyone involved: researchers had the opportunity to talk about their research and their experience in implementing the FAIR principles, whilst also sharing and receiving RDM tips during the discussions. We had the opportunity to promote the Center for RDM and its tools and services, and gained in-depth insights into selected research areas at TU Wien, a feel for their research culture, and important pointers regarding discipline-specific support needs. 

General key takeaways

Certain topics recurred in the various discussions. They point to fundamental issues and wishes. Here are a few examples:

• Data preparation after project completion takes time, which researchers feel they do not have.
• The completeness of metadata is a matter of perspective (code vs. dataset).
• There is a lack of standardisation in code sharing (e.g. via GitHub).
• Data flow pipelines with automated metadata and DOI assignment would be desirable.
• With proprietary software, format lock-in prevents interoperability.
• Because real-life data is scarce or restricted, datasets from simulations are on the rise.
• The use of AI is already ubiquitous in RDM.

Further information

For further information, please contact Livia Beck and Christiane Stork from the Center for RDM at TU Wien at research.data@tuwien.ac.at.