I am Natalie Raia, a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the College of Information Science at the University of Arizona. My formal training is in geology – I conducted my PhD work at University of Minnesota and my undergraduate work at the University of Texas at Austin. At University of Arizona, I have moved out of the geochemistry lab and into the realms of social and information science. My research seeks to understand how scientists search for physical samples and data to reuse, and what types of metadata they need to make determinations for reuse. As part of my work, I have served in working groups with Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) and the Research Data Alliance (RDA). It is exciting to see connections between this work and work presented as part of the RDAP 2025 Summit.
From Thomas Padilla’s opening keynote, I found language and concepts that resonated with me. The concept of securing resilience through both centralization and decentralization, and the balancing act required between the two, is something we currently face in the grant-funded earth science repository space. As someone who works on the user-experience side of these databases, and who gets to see translations between front-end and back-end development, the implications of centralization vs. decentralization for user functionality and database complexity, for instance, are wide- ranging, and I found this keynote thought-provoking in these ways. Heather Coates’ presentation on Tuesday [“Cultivating a Resilient Research Data Stewardship Community Through Sustained Dialog”] underscored the time it takes to build (and sustain) research data stewardship communities, and I particularly appreciated the perspectives gained and lessons learned from the work being done by teams at Indiana University to cross silos and facilitate cross-institutional dialog. The positioning (and reality) of data services programs as advocates for researchers in the development of recommendations for institutional leaders that help reduce the burden on researchers is powerful and to me tied back to the theme of the invisible labor it takes to sustain and support data stewardship communities. On Wednesday, I was joyfully introduced to the world of serious play through Kelly Burns’ and Koushiki Pohit’s presentation on RDM-related games and Amber Gallant’s inspiring micro-education program for PhD students. Injecting RDM concepts within an existing curricular structure is a powerful way to embed RDM into the research workflows of the next generation of practitioners. There are many other thought-provoking presentations I learned from over the week, but these are a few highlights.
Overall, my first RDAP Summit experience was a wonderful introduction to the RDAP community. Moving forward from this experience, I am excited by the possibilities for closer ties between organizations such as RDAP and ESIP: organizations grappling with shared data challenges and bringing different sets of stakeholders to the table. I am energized by the work being done by institutional libraries and repositories and the potential for future user-focused collaborations in these spaces. Thank you to the RDAP Association for this scholarship – this opportunity is timely for my career and research endeavors, and I look forward to continued engagement with the RDAP network.
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My name is Dr. Carl Haynes-Magyar, and I am a newly hired Research Data Librarian. I work in Hilman Library at the University of Pittsburgh. I like to say that my job is interesting because it’s very meta—as a researcher, I ran many experiments and now, as a research data librarian, I get to draw on my knowledge of the research life cycle to provide support and expertise to students, faculty, and researchers in research data management planning, data acquisition, data sharing, and computational research methods. When I found out that I got the job, I immediately started looking for a community and came across the Research Data Access & Preservation (RDAP) discussion listserv which had just posted about the scholarship to attend the Summit.
My experience started with meeting my Summit Buddy, Abigail Goben, for a chat about several things, but what stuck out to me was our conversation about gaps in the research on data management and future ideas for projects. Among other things, Goben pointed out that a "huge area that is poorly understood and explored" is on research data management and undergraduate education. She identified Kristin Partlo as having begun this work over a decade ago but commented that "no one has really looked at it recently". Goben was also clear about things we do not need such as "case studies of unvalidated surveys where 'we interviewed faculty to see what their data management needs are.'" She said, "the answer, now and always will be 'storage' and 'someone else to do it for me for free'.” This was a particularly important discussion given my experience as a researcher and my interest in collaborating with others in the field to research different phenomena of relevance and interest to our community.
One of the presentations I was looking forward to was “Understanding Researcher Needs and Challenges: Findings from a Qualitative Study on Research Data Services,” by researcher Chelsea McCracken and senior analyst Ruby MacDougall at ITHAKA S+R. They set out to explore researchers’ needs, challenges, and experiences across the data lifecycle—from data creation and management to analysis, sharing, and skill development. And they also investigate which campus resources researchers use for data support, where those resources are located, and how researchers perceive and evaluate their effectiveness. Their research resulted in recommendations for universities, libraries, IT and research computing, the research office, and funders. Notably, for funders, one way I thought to expand on this would be to better understand how they evaluate data management and sharing plans (DSMPs) as this has an impact on researchers’ incentive. In particular, the National Science Foundation is moving to a webform for DMSP, so it’ll be interesting to see what training they offer reviewers to increase the rigor with which these are not only assessed but developed and implemented by researchers to ultimately culminate in them sharing their publications and their supporting data as directed by the Nelson Memo.
My name is Nikki Galloway, and I am a Research Data Management (RDM) Librarian within the Old Dominion University (ODU) Libraries, in Norfolk, VA. I have been in the full-time RDM librarian position since July 2024. This position is new and was created as library and university priorities and strategies evolve with the research landscape. I am a spring 2024 graduate of the ODU MLIS program and while in the program I worked with the ODU libraries as a graduate assistant and then a part-time RDM specialist in the Scholarly Communication department.
Prior to joining ODU, I completed an M.S. in Earth Sciences: Ocean Mapping and worked for 10 years as a marine geoscientist. The teams I worked on were responsible for processing, compiling, storing, delivering, and archiving the large amounts of data collected. Having participated in those activities, I recognize the transferrable nature of the skills involved, and it is exciting to expand my knowledge to different disciplines and both learn and share best practices around RDM. However, being in a new data librarian position at my institution, in addition to being relatively new to academic librarianship in general, I recognize the need to engage with a broader community. The RDAP Summit has been an ideal venue for this, and the involvement has allowed me to better understand the role of data management in the scholarly ecosystem, how it is evolving, and how I can use this information to best support my community.
It is my intention to help grow and sustain the RDM services the ODU libraries’ provide as well as work to engage with related university partners in meaningful ways to support researchers. Even though I am only a second-time Summit attendee, I have been both impressed and appreciative of the community focus many of the RDAP Summit presentations have, with direct emphasis on the collaborative efforts between people, departments, and institutions. Summit themes for this year that align particularly well with relevant goals in our library include providing timely and relevant resources to researchers, such as the restricted data repositories list [“Locating Restricted Data Repositories - Access via Data Use Agreements”] and GREI resources [“Domain Repository Not Available: Developing Guidance for Researchers Using Generalist Repositories”], exploring the relevance of institutional data repositories [“The Repository of Last Resort? Exploring the Relevance of Institutional Data Repositories”], and integrating RDM in graduate education [“Building Resilient Research Practices: Integrating RDM into Graduate Education”]. Attending the summit has provided tangible support for learning new ideas so I can adapt to the needs of my institution’s RDM services. The RDAP community is welcoming, supportive, and helpful, and it is my intention to continue with and grow my involvement with the Association.
I’d like to extend my gratitude to the RDAP Association, the RDAP Sponsorship and Membership Action Committees, Elsevier, and the RDAP members who made the scholarships possible.
I am Mego Franks, a senior library assistant at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, and this was my first time attending the RDAP Summit. The theme of building on experience and centering communities was especially poignant for me, as I only work adjacent to and not directly with data services, and I work in a small library. I rely on cross-collaboration with other, more experienced groups and departments at my institution to get our researchers the knowledge and tools they need when our library doesn’t have the capacity to provide that level of service. Communities and relationship building are at the heart of what we do in libraries – and now I know that commitment extends to data services, too.
I started my inaugural RDAP experience with a pre-conference workshop, "Programming Logic for Non-Programmers", which helped me get into a more data-minded mood. The workshop helped me think about how my brain probably works differently than the brains of the researchers I am helping, and how I can "speak their language" and understand their thought processes better to figure out what they really need. This stood out to me because it is a very similar concept to a reference interview, something I do every day, to get to the real question being asked by a patron. I understand now that learning how data is described and accessed, even if I am not using it in my own work, helps me better understand what my patrons need. Working in a medical library, this concept is familiar to me in another way – I may not understand all the terminology being used by doctor or researcher patrons, but I can understand the logic behind it.
I was already feeling inspired going into the conference proper after that pre-conference workshop; what came next was an awesome explosion of information and community, all from people with the same passion to make research data as accessible as possible. I was pleasantly surprised by the breadth of topics that could be covered under the scope of research data access and preservation. I was happy to see a balance of technical subjects and more people-focused subjects. My goals going into this conference were to learn new skills and areas of education previously unknown to me. I did not expect to be able to contribute much as a "data-adjacent" person, but I found an incredibly engaging, thoughtful community at this conference who valued my input. This, above all else, was really the shining point of the conference theme. People who care about data need and want to build strong communities of practice, with viewpoints from librarians to researchers to data managers and beyond. Everyone can contribute in some way to research data access and preservation.
Exploring New Paths at My First RDAP Summit
Attending this year’s RDAP Summit was a meaningful experience for me—both professionally and personally. As the new Data Services Librarian at James Madison University (JMU), this was my first time attending the conference. Thanks to the generous scholarship support, I was able to fully participate as both a poster presenter and a session speaker. It was energizing to not only share my work but also to learn from so many others who are navigating similar questions in data education and research support.
A key takeaway for me was the diversity of teaching approaches shared throughout the conference. Since I’m still fairly new to the field—and especially new to teaching—it was incredibly valuable to hear how others are designing instruction on data literacy, research data management, and repository navigation. These sessions gave me both reassurance and fresh ideas to bring back to JMU.
One of the more unexpected highlights was a session on open science ["Open Science à la Carpentries"]. I hadn’t originally planned to attend it, but I’m grateful I did. I was immediately drawn to the connections between open science principles and the data literacy concepts I already cover in the classroom. It’s made me reconsider how I frame some of those lessons and opened up new ways to talk about research transparency and accessibility with both students and faculty.
Thomas Padilla’s keynote "On Service, Services, and Maintaining the Public Interest" was especially impactful. He grounded his talk in the realities of today’s political landscape and its implications for libraries and higher education. I appreciated the practical steps he outlined for continuing this work amidst these challenges, and I left feeling both inspired and better equipped to support our campus community.
One of the things I most enjoyed about the Summit was being part of a shared presentation session. I was slotted alongside two other speakers whose work closely aligned with mine, and that format created a collaborative atmosphere I hadn’t expected. Other speakers were able to build on my presentation, and together we explored overlapping challenges from different perspectives. It was one of the most affirming and rewarding parts of the experience. And I’d be remiss not to mention the RDAP game night—it was a fun and refreshing way to connect informally with other attendees in a virtual setting!
The conference theme, Evolutions in Data Services: Forging Resiliency, truly came to life throughout the Summit. I felt that emphasis not only in the session content but also in the way attendees supported and engaged with one another. As someone just starting out in this role, I left feeling like I had found a community to grow with.
Many thanks to the RDAP Membership Action Committee for making this opportunity possible—I’m so grateful to have had the chance to attend, contribute, and learn.
As a recent graduate of a Master of Library Science program, the 2025 RDAP Summit proved to be beneficial by providing resources and opportunities to be in community with data professionals. As a first time attendee of the RDAP Summit, I was able to gain insight into how organizations are responding to evolving information needs and technologies. I believe that the theme of the Summit, Evolutions in Data Services: Forging Resiliency, was a timely and significant topic for data professionals. For example, the session Ethical AI Practices and Documentation ["Navigating AI’s Ethical Complexities: Building Resilience with a Library-Centered Literacy Framework"; "The Chat’s Out of the Bag"; "Documenting AI Prompts"; "Data Licensing: Forging Resiliency Through Open Datasets"] allowed me to gain an understanding of how technological advancements such as artificial intelligence may impact the retrievability and accessibility of research data.
Additionally, the session Innovative and Engaging Data Literacy ["The Quest for Effective Data Management: Resiliency Through Serious Play"; "Byte-Sized Data Encounters: Empowering Doctoral Students’ Data Skills Through Practical Micro-Education"; "Sustaining Humanities Research with Data Collectives"] was instrumental in emphasizing the importance of Research Data Management (RDM) services. The various sessions at the Summit included lighting talks and presentations, making the Summit jam-packed with content that was both informative and engaging for attendees. The Pheedloop platform was effective in allowing attendees to access the Zoom links for each session. Also, a shared notes document was available on the Pheedloop platform, allowing Summit attendees to share key takeaways from each session. The shared notes document was a neat way for Summit attendees to contribute to one working document, making information from the various sessions accessible to all attendees.
I particularly enjoyed the social sessions at the RDAP Summit because they offered me the opportunity to learn about other RDAP members and their work. The New Members and First Time Attendees Get-Together made it possible for me to learn about the different RDAP committees and the meaningful work that is done by each committee. My interactions with other members of the RDAP community during this summit highlighted the collaborative and welcoming nature of the RDAP community. My attendance at the RDAP Summit increased my excitement for working in interdisciplinary information environments that emphasize data services, research, and technology. The RDAP Summit also served to increase my awareness of ethical considerations such as data privacy in an age of technological innovation. Ultimately, the RDAP Summit made me optimistic for the future of the data profession, highlighting many of the challenges and opportunities in this growing field.
I was fortunate to receive a 2025 RDAP Summit scholarship that allowed me to attend the Summit. I am the Public Health and Science Librarian at California State University, Sacramento, and our university just became an R2 institution this year. With this reclassification, our library anticipates a greater need for research data services. The RDAP Summit provided me with great insight into how other libraries run and implement their services. It also gave me a platform to more widely share a project I had worked on in collaboration with University of Minnesota librarians as a participant in the Data Services Continuing Professional Education (DSCPE) program. I presented a lightning talk on our experience incorporating CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance into an institutional data repository ["Taking Steps to Integrate CARE Principles Into Institutional Data Repositories: A DSCPE Project"], and I was happy to see so many other members of my DSCPE cohort also present their projects.
One of the sessions that was the most helpful was "Domain Repository Not Available: Developing Guidance for Researchers Using Generalist Repositories", presented by Lisa Curtin and Crystal N. Steltenpohl. Although we have an institutional repository, it is not equipped to handle large data files or all data file types. We don’t currently have the funding or infrastructure to create a data repository, so this session gave me ideas for how to educate our faculty/researchers on other open repositories they can use to satisfy funder mandates. The repository comparison chart and the repository selection flowchart the presenters shared will be especially useful resources to provide guidance for researchers, and the education component is low cost enough to make it feasible to implement.
I was also inspired by the amazing closing keynote where Casey Fiesler presented on the ethics of collecting data from fandom communities. Fiesler discussed questions we should ask ourselves as the data collector, who really owns the data collected, and how research should be mutually beneficial for researchers and the communities being studied. Many of these questions aligned with aspects of the CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance. The ethics, privacy and ownership considerations discussed are not always the same concerns that funders and researchers are required to address, but that does not mean they should be overlooked when researchers decide how to analyze, publish, and share the data. These aspects are definitely things I will consider and bring to the attention of researchers going forward when advising on data management and sharing plans.
My name is Marisa Lytle, and I am a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the Developmental Psychology program at Penn State. I currently serve as a data stewardship graduate assistant with the Data Learning Center at Penn State University Libraries. At the RDAP 2025 Summit, I had the opportunity to present our ongoing review project, which aims to collect, categorize, and share survey and interview measures related to researchers’ data management needs and their perceptions of research data services [Poster: "A Scoping Review to Collect and Disseminate Survey and Interview Measures of Researcher Data Management Needs and Perceptions of Data Management Services"].
During the poster session, we received thoughtful feedback and valuable resources that will help us refine our gray literature search strategies and better capture a broader range of surveys. This was also the largest audience I’ve ever had viewing any of my research posters, which was encouraging and provided us with a lot of great ideas for the future of our project. We also made several meaningful connections with others conducting similar work or who have unpublished or hard-to-find survey measures they wished to share with us. If you’re reading this and happen to have relevant survey or interview instruments, feel free to send those our way!
One of the biggest takeaways for me was the culture of openness and collaboration that permeated the sessions I attended. Many presenters went out of their way to provide links or contact information to access workshop materials, handouts, and other resources which is a level of transparency and sharing that is not yet the norm in my field of psychology. The insights shared during RDAP, especially tips on how to make data management workshops more engaging in the sessions Cross-Disciplinary Collaboration and Partnerships ["Stronger Together: Ecosystem-Level Approaches to Strengthening Data Sharing Infrastructures"; "Collaborative Modalities for Data Services Instruction and Outreach"; "Investigating and Addressing the Needs of Research Support Staff"; "Send It Away, or Put It On Display? How to Talk with Research Computing Staff"] and Training and Mentorship in RDM ["Using a Faculty Recruitment Strategy to Train Research Staff and Students to Develop Data Management Plans"; "Building Resilient Research Practices: Integrating RDM into Graduate Education"; "Training a Student to Train the Trainer: An LIS Masters Student’s Internship Project On Developing an RDM Toolkit for Liaison Librarians"; "Supporting Our Future Colleagues: Remote Student-Led Data Internship"] left me inspired to think creatively about how to communicate RDM practices to researchers in my own discipline. Together the tips and collaborative environment sparked new ideas for how I might encourage my colleagues to adopt more open research practices and promote engagement with research data management within psychology.
I also greatly enjoyed attending the new members and first-time attendees social event! The organizers did an excellent job creating a welcoming and engaging virtual space with fun social activities and trivia, while also allowing time for casual conversations. Virtual socializing can often feel awkward or forced, but I left the event feeling truly welcomed, connected, and with a renewed sense of belonging as someone entering the RDAP community from outside the field of library and information sciences. I’m excited to continue learning from and contributing to the RDAP community!
Reflections from a First-Time RDAP Summit Attendee: Lots of Learning, Inspiration, and Connections
Attending the 2025 Research Data Access and Preservation (RDAP) Summit for the first time was an exciting and eye-opening experience for me. As I’m very new to my position as the Research Data Management Coordinator at the University of Georgia Libraries, my work focuses on helping researchers navigate best practices for data management, open science, and institutional repositories. Going into the conference, I was very eager to learn from others in my field, connect with like-minded professionals, and explore some innovative approaches and strategies for supporting research data services. The conference theme Evolutions in Data Services: Forging Resiliency—felt especially relevant, given the ongoing challenges and rapid changes across scholarly communication, data stewardship, and federal research policies.
A particularly inspiring moment for me came right away on day 1 from Thomas Padilla’s keynote address ["On Service, Services, and Maintaining the Public Interest"], which emphasized the importance of flexibility and adaptability in research data services. His insights into how institutions have successfully pivoted in response to funding shifts, technological advancements, and evolving researcher needs underscored the resilience required in our field. This shared passion for building sustainable, researcher-centered services reminded me why I love working in research data management and gave me a renewed sense of purpose.
One surprising takeaway was learning just how interdisciplinary and collaborative data services have become. While I expected to hear about trends in open science and repository management, I hadn’t anticipated the depth of discussions on topics like AI-driven data curation, data ethics, and even the role of data in public policy decisions. These conversations reinforced how critical it is to stay agile and open to new developments—whether that means embracing new metadata standards, exploring emerging repository platforms and data tools, or even just rethinking how we communicate data policies to faculty, researchers, and students.
Beyond the sessions, one of the most rewarding aspects of RDAP was the sense of community, even within a virtual environment. As a first-time attendee, I was welcomed, introduced to peers who shared similar challenges, and given opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations about the future of research data. Having a space like this to share ideas, learn from experienced professionals, and problem-solve in a supportive and open environment was incredibly valuable to me.
I’m leaving the 2025 RDAP Summit with a fresh perspective on resiliency in data services, a list of new tools and strategies to explore and share on my campus, and new connections with professionals who are equally passionate about improving research data practices. In the coming months, I really hope to integrate some of these insights into UGA’s data management initiatives, particularly by incorporating more inclusive and adaptable data policies into our newly minted institutional repository and outreach efforts.
For anyone considering attending RDAP for the first time—just go for it! It’s a fantastic space to learn, grow, and connect with a dedicated community that is shaping the future of research data services. I’m already looking forward to attending next year’s Summit! I am also incredibly thankful for RDAP for providing this valuable training opportunity to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
I am Alparslan Ozturk, and I am the Data Support Specialist from the institutional library at Carleton University, located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. I’ve been working with academic data for almost 2 years. I really couldn’t have imagined how deep the data iceberg descends when I was first exposed to it.
I came across the RDAP scholarship application through IASSIST and was happy to apply to learn more about resilient data services, as it would help me feel better about how I would be doing my work in the discourse that be, and the discourse to come.
I’m a firm believer of mixed-methods research and one of my knowledge gaps came in the form of qualitative data analysis QDA. So, when I read that there was a workshop being conducted on an open source QDA tool ["Teaching Qualitative Data Analysis using Open Data, Standards, and Tools"], I was more than happy to jump on board!
Besides that, I spend quite a lot of time providing general data service, especially administering my institutional data repository, to which I was glad to attend and learn more about RDM and how others have approached handling and teaching it to their respective groups!
From the get-go I was enlightened by the purpose of storytelling in resilient data services. Often in the context of data, storytelling is attributed to visualization data and helping anyone (and everyone) to consume it. But from Thomas Padilla’s opening keynote ["On Service, Services, and Maintaining the Public Interest"], the tone was set as to how it would be approached in an institutional and instructional method, which carried through the rest of the conference.
Some great sessions involved how other institutions were teaching RDM specifically the gamification of it. Be it the (welcome surprise) Kelly Burns and Koushiki Pohit’s discussion of developing an actual video game to teach RDM, or the micro-sessions showcased by Amber Gallant, the approaches are (and were respectively) driven by narrative to help users feel more in engaged in the storytelling embodying RDM.
Additionally, a recurring theme throughout the many fantastic discussions was storytelling inwards to the institution. Where Data Services teams across the conference were collaborating, working for, or realigning their teams in a way that was needed to tell the "RDM story."
One big component I appreciated was the opportunities for socializing and networking with the conference goers, be it through the first-timers session, or just the breakout rooms to discuss hobbies. The conference goers and organizers were so welcoming, friendly, and enthusiastic, it just strengthened my appreciation for the community that much more.
Overall, I am grateful for the opportunity to have attended RDAP this year due to the scholarship and am looking forward to hearing more from the community in the coming years.
