All entries for Thursday 20 October 2011

Data Management: after the JISC Webinar!

Writing about web page http://www.jisc.ac.uk/events/2011/10/webinarmrd.aspx

I recently attended a virtual seminar run by the JISC, on the topic of data management. Slides and a recording of the event are available online at the link above. A summary of what picked up on follows. Also, since the Webinar, a colleague has highlighted the following Warwick pages on data management to me: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/gov/informationsecurity/universitydata/researchdata/

Sarah Porter's slides covered what the JISC offers on the topic of Data Management. They recognize the need for institutional policies, and clarity over roles and responsibilities within an institution. Researchers often define "data" very differently. FOI requests at Universities are increasing.

Simon Hodson's presentation had a great slide on the research data lifecycle and my favourite part of it was where the researchers should select what is to be kept and what is to be discarded! The kept data might be handed over to a repository.

On top of this cycle, Simon imposed an institutional cycle, to support good data management practice: this is rather a blue-print for how an institution can respond: It begins with 'Guidance and Policy Development' and goes on to 'Training and Information'. Then there is 'Support for Data Management Planning' and then 'RDM Systems and infrastructure' and then 'Publication and Citation mechanisms' (recognition, rewards and benefits for data sharing, etc). There then follows a flurry of useful links. I've collated links from both presentations which stood out for me, below.

Simon's slides then visit the theme of costing data archiving, including evidence of the cost saving for centralizing data archiving.

Guidance for researchers

DCC How-To Guides: http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides
(On topics such as: –Appraise and select research data for curation –How to license research data –How to develop a data management and sharing plan)

DCC Data Management Plan Online tool: http://www.dcc.ac.uk/dmponline

JISC Q&A on ‘Freedom of Information and Research Data’: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/publications/programmerelated/2010/foiresearchdata.aspx

How to cite data: DCC Briefing Paper on Data Citation and Linking: http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/briefing-papers/introduction-curation/data-citation-and-linking

UK Data Archive has stuff for Programme level data management (most other stuff is project level): http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/media/257765/ukdadatamanagementrecommendations_centresprogrammes.pdf

At other institutions

• Oxford Uni's pages on Data management: http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/rdm/
• Cambridge's guidelines: www.lib.cam.ac.uk/dataman/
• Glasgow's guidelines: www.gla.ac.uk/datamanagement/

Video materials:

• http://www.lib.cam.ac.uk/dataman/training.html#Interviews
• http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/datamanagement/training/videos/

PhD students

JISC's Five projects to design and pilot (reusable) discipline-focussed training units for postgraduate courses: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/mrd/rdmtrain.aspx - I visited these pages and the projects should all now be completed (by 31 July 2011) so this is worth further exploration. Edinburgh's "MANTRA" looks particularly interesting, being non-discipline specific, and at first glance I'm interested in their packages relating to SPSS, which is used by many researchers. CAiRO also seems especially interesting in that it's about data from live arts departments, which is perhaps a less obvious form of reserach data.

Data management policies

RCUK Common Principles on Data Policy: http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/Pages/DataPolicy.aspx

Overview of funder policies: http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/data-management-plans/funders-requirements

DMP Checklist: http://www.dcc.ac.uk/webfm_send/431 (This refers to the online tool as the most up to date version of this guidance, but it is a different format.)

Jenny Delasalle : 20 Oct 2011 09:00 |  Tags: Data Data Management Information Skills Research Skills Researchers |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem