Research data management (RDM) is gaining prominence across Max Planck Law. In essence, it covers everything that happens to research data before, during, and after a project: from planning and collection to storage, analysis, archiving, and sharing. Done well, RDM safeguards against data loss, strengthens good scientific practice, and enables transparency and reusability. Increasingly, the Max Planck Society, along with other research funding bodies, treats it not as an optional extra, but as a baseline expectation.
At the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory , researcher and data steward, Polina Solonets, is helping to situate the RDM agenda within the legal humanities in general and legal-historical research in particular. ‘In disciplines like ours, research data often is our source material,’ she explains. ‘Digitized archives, transcriptions, notes, images—these are not just raw data points but intellectual work that needs to be preserved and documented’.
Polina presented on this topic at the ‘7th Research Data Management Workshop 2025’, held at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. Her talk, given with Andreas Wagner (MPI-Frankfurt) and titled ‘Rolling out (or up, or down) RDM at a Humanities Research Institute: Strategy and Practice’, grappled with the challenges of implementing RDM both top-down, through institute-wide policies and templates, and bottom-up, by recognizing and supporting the diverse research practices across teams.
A useful distinction emerges when considering how data is managed across disciplines. ‘In natural sciences, data is often standardized and instrument-generated,’ Solonets explains. ‘But in the humanities, data is often shaped by interpretation itself. That makes documentation crucial for future scholars to understand what was done and why’.
To support colleagues in navigating these complexities, Solonets has authored a four-part blog series titled ‘Love Your Data’ on Legal History Insights. Part I introduces RDM; Part II outlines the research data life cycle; Part III explains metadata and the FAIR principles (‘Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable’); and Part IV delves into legal matters such as copyright and the principle ‘as open as possible, as closed as necessary’.
Given the diversity across Max Planck Law, Solonets notes that each Institute must assess its own practices. ‘There is no one-size-fits-all solution. What we need are local infrastructures and trusted contacts who know both the research and the data’. Her invitation to other institutes is clear: let’s start the conversation, and make RDM a practical ally for legal research.
Polina Solonets welcomes colleagues from across the network to get in touch with her directly for support, ideas, or collaboration at solonets@lhlt.mpg.de