Looking back on the Open Science Festival 2025: Stories, stickies, heat, and great enthusiasm 

What are the most pressing training needs for the Dutch data professional community? To answer this question, RDNL organised a workshop at the Open Science Festival in Groningen, on 24 October 2025.

Open Science NL granted funding to RDNL to build a National Training & Community platform for data professionals. The project started in January 2025 and will last for four years. The main goal is to increase the capacity for data stewardship at Dutch research institutions to enable the transition to Open Science. The four partners of RDNL (4TU.ResearchData, DANS, Health-RI, SURF) are drafting a curriculum, designing a training programme and building a platform where individuals and communities can meet and find all relevant information about training. But to guarantee that the national training programme responds to the needs of the data professionals and their employers, we cannot do without the input of the data professionals themselves.

Therefore, we were happy to welcome almost 30 data professionals, researchers, trainers and policy makers at our workshop. After presenting the project briefly, we asked them to tell each other about a situation from their daily practice in which they felt they lacked specific skills or knowledge. We asked them to write these training needs down and map them onto one of the seven competency areas that we distinguish in the RDNL Competency Framework (based on existing frameworks such as Skills4EOSC and the Professionalising data stewardship in the Netherlands NPOS-F report):

• RDM, FAIR principles and open science
• Research software management
• Data infrastructure
• Legal and ethical responsibilities
• Policy and governance
• Training and awareness raising
• Transversal skills

Soon the temperature in the room rose thanks to the passionate conversations. Over 90 sticky notes were written, covering all of the competency areas. We therefore asked the participants to cluster the training needs per area and summarise them for the entire group. This summary was important for the final phase of the session: voting which of the identified training needs were most pressing. The participants each received 3 dots to vote for their most wanted training.

At the top of the most pressing training needs: a training on ‘the ethical (and unethical) use of AI’. Secondly, ‘how to develop and properly provide training’. Other topics that received multiple votes are: ‘FAIR for qualitative data’, support for (international) collaborations, how to develop policy, new cybersecurity laws, and in the category of transversal skills: advisory and communication skills.

We mapped the input received to the RDNL competency framework, to ensure that the knowledge and skills perceived as crucial for data stewards are well covered. In the next phase of the RDNL project, we will update existing trainings and, together with other training providers and experts in the field, develop training to fill the gaps perceived. One pressing training need that will already be addressed by RDNL in 2026 is a train-the-trainer training. So keep an eye out on our activities!