equipment.data - The challenges of developing standards

Adrian Cox, Project Manager, equipment.data&Andrew Milsted, Web Developer, equipment.data

30th April 20141

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Research Facilities and Equipment SharingDATA SHARING LANDSCAPE IN ACADEMIA

Academia

data.ac.uk data sharing and development community

equipment.data.ac.uk National equipment sharing web portal

UNIQUIP Project (Network, standards and outcomes)

N8

GW4

Project deliverables fed into equipment.data and data.ac.uk

Accessing “data” know how

Contributing to or searching equipment data

M5

SES

RCUK

Strategy & policy drivers

Sector technology and standards e.g. ePrints, Pure, Agresso, Kit Catalogue, CERIF, CASRAI and ORCID

Data and technology standards sharing (creating added value datasets)

RCUK “Gateway to Research” Project

Sharing knowledge and outputs with industry providers (e.g. vendors, user groups and knowledge networks)

Regional consortia projects contribution to project

JISC

Support for sector technology and standards development e.g. HEDIIP

Input from development projects into Gateway to Research portal (e.g. G4HE, CERIF in Action, CASRAI UK Dictionary)

Knowledge exchange through UNIQUIP network

Improving visibility of research outputs

UNIQUIP – “Defining standards for the publication of research facilities and equipment data”

• Established network of interest across HE for development of equipment databases

• Established foundation for a national equipment data portal (equipment.data launched in April 2013)

• Further developed the N8 taxonomy for equipment categorisation – Augmenting with CPV codes

• Created standard vocabulary for equipment and facility databases – The “UNIQUIP Data Publishing Specification” 3

The UNIQUIP Data Publishing Specificationhttp://equipment.data.ac.uk/uniquip

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Practice what you preach!The University of Southampton database

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University of Southampton DatabaseExample search result - Facility

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Issues faced for equipment sharing

• Ownership – Who are the stakeholders and what is their responsibility?

• Data sustainability – Where is the data captured? Who updates the entries?

• Related procedures e.g. asset Management? Can this be included in a current process? What is the impact?

• Adoption – Gaining buy-in to use e.g. What’s in it for me?

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Agresso Fixed Asset Module development New “Equipment” and “Facilities” screens

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What are the benefits of this development?• It provides a more sustainable integrated approach

to the data management process

• It will improve data ownership (therefore quality) engaging stakeholders in the asset lifecycle

• It delivers asset verification process efficiencies (including engaging academics through publication)

• Reduces need for management of an additional database – Equipment database is driven by asset register data

• It enables direct contribution to equipment.data 9

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http://equipment.data.ac.uk

• It’s easy to start contributing: Publish core minimum data to UNIQUIP data publishing specification (RCUK’s preferred standard) Make your data discoverable and agree to publish openly

• It’s generating benefits:Creating a “shop window” for UK HE equipment Delivering sector standards creating efficiencies in asset management processimproving discoverability of data.Working to aggregate with Gateway to Research – improving data richness and analytics to demonstrate impact

• It’s supporting and promoting standards:Working with Jisc, CASRAI, Gateway to Research and CERIF 11

equipment.data – National Equipment PortalExample search results

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Status Report – Contributors and data statistics

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What is an Organisation Profile Document?

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• A RDF Document that describes the organisation, • General information provided:

• Official name• Postal address• Contact phone number• The correct logo• Website• Physical location

• Links to the parts of the organisation,• Admissions, Alumni, Freedom of Information,

Complaints• Links to the organisation’s Open Data Service

• The equipment dataset

What is an Organisation Profile Document?

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Machine Readable Version!

What is an Organisation Profile Document?

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Human Readable Version!

OPDs and Auto-discovery

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• Dataset publicly available on website.• Dataset has to be added manually along with all the

institutions details, contacts etc• Requires staff time (especially if any dataset changes

location)• Organisation has an OPD linking to dataset

• The OPD has to be added manually, but the dataset location and institution info is consumed directly from the OPD.• Requires less staff time (as any changes made to OPD

will get updated)• Link to OPD from organisation’s home page

• OPD autodiscovered, so the dataset is automatically added to the service.• Requires no staff time (as data is autodiscover)

Compliance and Sustainability

Bronze Silver Gold

Data is on the internet and in an acceptable format. ✔ ✔ ✔

Description of dataset is provided by a remotely hosted OPD

✔ ✔

The OPD is discovered via autodiscovery. ✔

The OPD/dataset has a recognised and supported open licence (eg CCO, ODCA or OGL)

✔

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Related initiatives and developments

• Higher Education Data & Information Improvement Programmed (HEDIIP)

• CASRAI (UK “Dictionary” for research data) “Equipment” profile working group to be formed

• Gateway to Research (GtR) Working with equipment.data to establish added

value from data sharing – potential to demonstrate impact

• CERIF (euroCRIS) Standardisation of vocabularies in research

repositories• Jisc Research Information Management (RIM) Group

Knowledge sharing and standards promotion 19

….and finally, you will see us at ARMA

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Thank you!

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