When working with research data, and in fact with any digital data, things inevitably go wrong. From a minor whoopsie to a major catastrophe, things happen … even to the most experienced of us. We are not ashamed of our mistakes, because we have grown from them. In fact, we carry them as badges of honour on our devices.

Here you find a number of badges representing some common demerits in day-to-day research data management (RDM). If you think you have earned a badge, come and talk to us – we will not judge. We have been there, too.

Contact: info-dch(at)uni-koeln.de

CC-BY 4.0 Elisabeth Mollenhauer (badges) and Felix Rau (text)

We send single stickers or small quantities of stickers free of charge to researchers or RDM institutions. For larger quantities, you can order stickers yourself from your trusted printer. We provide all the necessary materials for printing and adopting the badges:

Rau, F., & Mollenhauer, G. E. (2025). RDM Demerit Badges (1.0.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14983644