Facing the research data challenge:ldeveloping data policy and services

Sarah Jones

Digital Curation Centre

sarah.jones@glasgow.ac.uk

Funded by:

DCC Northeast Scotland roadshow, 5-6 December 2012

Outline

• Who is responsible for RDM?

• What are the components of a data service?

• Learning lessons from other HEIs

• Developing roadmaps

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Who is responsible for RDM?

Research Organisations

Funders

Data centres

Advisory bodies

Support services

Researchers

Publishers

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Components of a research data service?

RDM policies

Archive

Preserve

& Share

Advocacy (senior mgmt & researcher)

Storage

Back-up

Access

Support staff & services

Research

environment&

systems

Tools

Metadata and documentation

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Data storage – Bristol example

Blue Peta at Bristol

• £2m funding to date• Petascale facility – expandable• 3 machine rooms – resilience (tape archive 2012)• Available to all researchers for research data

http://data.bris.ac.uk #dcc_dundee

1st 5TB free per Data Steward then £400 per TB p.a. for disk storage; tape backup £40 per TB

Tools – an ‘academic dropbox’

National level negotiation via Janet brokerage?

www.dataflow.ox.ac.uk Piloted at Lincoln & Edinburgh

http://tiny.cc/owncloud-pilot

Archiving – institutional data repositories

Not intended to replace national, subject or other established data

collections

Acknowledge hybrid environment

http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk

www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/https://databank.ora.ox.ac.uk

Essex-RDR and DataPool at Southampton

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Archiving – external data centres

Research funders’ data centres…

List of data centres: http://databib.org

Structured databases

Disciplinary& community initiatives

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Data catalogues (metadata)

Develop a research dataextension to the cerif standard

JISC & DCC planning national coordinationCan we learn lessons from overseas?

http://cerif4datasets.wordpress.com

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• DataFinder at Oxford

• DDI metadata by ResearchData@Essex

Guidance and trainingCollate guidancewww.gla.ac.uk/datamanagement

Online traininghttp://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra

Embed into curriculum via Doctoral Training Centres e.g. Research360@Bathhttp://blogs.bath.ac.uk/research360

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Disciplinary training (RDMTrain)

www.dcc.ac.uk/training/train-trainer/ disciplinary-rdm-training

Early research data policies

www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/policy-and-legal/institutional-data-policies

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“Statement of commitment” Infrastructure policy

“10 commandments”mutual promises

aspirational

Baseline of RCUK Code+ procedures & support

legal compliance stylea section in uni DM policyuseful guide as appendix

Based on Edin. with a few additions

How are others developing policies?

Theme from MRD workshop in Leeds:

High level policy (ratified)

+

User guides, practical support

+

RDM Infrastructure

http://tiny.cc/MRD-policy-workshop

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Developing data policies: a trend for 2012

http://tiny.cc/PolicyNews

(news post from Dec 2011)

Lots to think about and develop, so where to start?

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Make a plan!

“EPSRC expects all those it funds to have developed a clear roadmap to align their policies and processes with EPSRC’s expectations by 1st

May 2012, and to be fully compliant with these expectations by 1st May 2015.”

www.epsrc.ac.uk/about/standards/researchdata/Pages/impact.aspx

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What is the EPSRC looking for?

• Know what you hold – publish metadata

• Link publications and data

• Share data wherever possible

• Curate and preserve valuable data

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http://tiny.cc/EPSRC-data-policy

The same as other funders (i.e. good research practice) so think broadly when you develop your strategy

Questions?

CC-BY-NC-SA by sk8geek

Slides are available at:http://tiny.cc/RDMslides

Exercise: Developing a roadmap for RDM

Think about the potential components of a RDM service

Based on the strengths/weaknesses you identified in the quiz:

• Draft a list of actions needed at your institution

• Attempt to prioritise your list and pencil in timeframes (consider quick wins!)

• Decide who needs to be involved to make this happen?

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