Choose Your Own Research Data Management Guidance

The GW4 Research Data Services Group has developed a Research Data Management Triage Tool to help researchers find answers quickly to the more common research data queries, and direct them to appropriate guidance and sources of advice for more complex queries. The tool takes the form of an interactive web page that asks users questions and updates itself in response. The conversational and dynamic way the tool progresses is similar to the behaviour of text adventures, which are a genre of interactive fiction; this is one of the oldest forms of computer game and was also popular in print form in, for example, the Choose Your Own Adventure and Fighting Fantasy series of books. The tool was, indeed, written using interactive fiction software. It was tested with staff and students at the four UK universities within the GW4 collaboration.