Digital Repositories Workshop: Tools and Infrastructure

An internal event, the Digital Repositories Workshop: Tools and Infrastructure,  organised under the auspices of the Oxford Digital Repositories Steering Group will take place on Thursday 23 April.

This workshop aims to provide an overall view of best practice in the deployment and use of digital repositories to manage digital content in Oxford. The event is only open to Members of the University of Oxford and Colleges. 

To register please email: Julia.Bremble@oerc.ox.ac.uk

Using the DAF Methodology in Oxford

The document "Using the Data Audit Framework: An Oxford Case Study" reporting on the Oxford experience applying the DAF Methodology has now been published as a deliverable of the JISC funded DISC-UK DataShare project.

The DAF Methodology proved to be an excellent complement to the interview framework used to gather researchers' requirements for services to help them manage their data as part of the Scoping Digital Repository Services for

 Research Data Management project. 

In the Oxford DAF two research groups participated in the exercise mainly through their Data Managers who provided incredibly valuable information about their groups' data and data management practices.  In both cases, their practices where mapped, see example below, to the DCC Lifecycle Model which we felt it needed to be integrated with the DAF Methodology.

In addition to this, the DAF data assets register was used to compile information about data resources being made available through the Oxford website.

We have had a really good experience with the DAF Methodology here in Oxford and will certainly make use of it in the future.

Datasets Seminar in Madrid

On Monday I will be participating in a seminar organized to discuss the issues around the inclusion of data in digital repositories. The event has been organized by the Consorcio Madroño, a consortium of universities in Madrid with the aim of fostering inter-library collaboration. The seminar will also bring Alicia Medina from UNED, Stuart Macdonald from the University of Edinburgh and Dr. Celia Russsell from Manchester University.

I have been told that the presentations will be filmed and made available on the web. As soon I know where I will post it here. 

 

QUT's Practical Data Management Guide

Queensland University of Technology has just published "Practical Data Management: A Legal and Policy Guide". This is a very useful resource for researchers and repository managers with an interest in managing legal rights in data.

The guide provides a detailed introduction to copyright covering what it protects, who owns it and how is relevant for data available in digital repositories.  It then considers other legal aspects of data management such as moral rights, confidential information and privacy. After looking at data management policies that all research projects should have in place, it covers what data management plans (DMP) should cover :

• ownership of the data to be generated
  
• who is responsible for managing the data
• address the legal controls applying to collection or use of the data 
  
• security to protect the data collected
• the long-term preservation of the data

It is highlighted that " [a] data management plan will need to be consistent with the research institution's IP policies and data management policies"
 

UKRDS Interim Report

SERCO has published the UKRDS Interim Report where "The Committee is asked to consider the role of UKRDS as a vehicle for achieving coherence in data management strategy and service provision across the UK."

This report analyses the current situation in the UK with a detailed look at relevant literature and funders policies, it then moves into describing the emerging trends of local data repositories and national facilities to finally look at Australia, the US and the EU, competitors and partners of the UK. It suggests three options for UKRS models:

• No change
• Massively centralised
• Hybrid/Umbrella

The Hybrid/Umbrella model is presented as a lower risk and more managable option and promotes the UKRDS "representing the interests of many UK data repositories, both those based around single institutions and those based on storage for a single discipline." Amongst the functions of this model of "grid computing and cloud-base data storage", UKRDS would play the role of mediator, standards-setting body, source of information similar to the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and in time a data repository in its own.

I highly recommend everyone with an interest in research data management to have a look at this report as not only it captures the current state of affairs in the UK and elsewhere but also offers possible ways forward. The Hybrid/Umbrella model seems like a sound option to me, specially if UKRDS would be able to address what Liz Lyon's termed as the big gap during the Oxford Workshop, the joint up from funding bodies and councils for a national data strategy . As far as I am aware, UKRDS will report to HEFCE at the end of the year and hopefully the UK will have a new body to support and guide those institutions that, like Oxford, have an interest in developing services for research data management.

Oxford to use the Data Audit Framework as part of DataShare

From the DISC-UK DataShare blog:

In the coming months the Universities of Southampton and Oxford will conduct data audits using the JISC Data Audit Framework Methodology as part of the JISC DISC-UK DataShare project. 

JISC funded the Data Audit Framework (DAF) Development Project to develop a methodology to enable universities to carry out exercises to map research data resources and data management practices across departments and research centres. This should help departments and institutions to identify what data they have, where they are located and how they are being looked after as well as to raise awareness of the importance of actively managing research data. Four projects were funded to pilot the methodology at University College London, Imperial College London, University of Edinburgh, and King's College London.

In the University of Oxford, Luis Martinez-Uribe will conduct the data audit as part of the Scoping Digital Repository Services for Research Data Management project. After having captured requirements for services to assist researchers with their data management, Luis will use DAF to gain deeper understanding of the research data held in some departments and those data published on departmental websites.

Harry Gibbs and Teresa McGowan will be leading the DAF work at the University of Southampton aiming to build a picture of the research data used and generated in the School of Social Sciences and to gain understanding of the School’s current data management processes.

Findings Report-Oxford Data Management

The findings from the scoping study interviews with Oxford researchers and the complementary workshop are now available at : http://www.ict.ox.ac.uk/odit/projects/digitalrepository/findings.xml

The findings report documents current data management practices amongst Oxford researchers and it also captures the top requirements for services to help researchers manage their data more effectively.

Thanks to everyone who participated in the interviews and the workshop for their time and support. If you would like to comment on the report please send your feedback to me.

JISC Innovation Forum: Research data-Whose problem is it?

On the 15th and 16th of July the JISC Innovation Forum took place at Keele University. One of the four themes of the forum was research data and it included three sessions:

 - legal and policy 

 - capacity and skills

 - technical and infrastructure     

These sessions generated a lot of interesting discussion and are blogged at: http://jif08.jiscinvolve.org/theme-2-the-challenges-of-research-data/ 

Particularly useful to this project is Matthew Dowey's summed up of the brainstorm on the technical&infrastructure session with the four priority areas for JISC:

   1. within a research environment – can we facilitiate the data curation using the carrot of sharing systems? (IT systems in the lab)

   2. additional context beyond the metadata

   3. how do we help institutions understand their infrastructural needs

   4. what has to happen with the various dataset systems (fedora etc) to help them link with the library and institutional systems

Data Librarianship

My colleague Stuart Macdonald, Edinburgh University Data Library, and I were interviewed last year by CILIP's editor Elspeth Hyams. The interview focused on our roles as Data Librarians and the emerging need of Librarians to participate in the active curation of research data.

The interview is available at:

http://www.cilip.org.uk/publications/updatemagazine/archive/archive2008/june/Interview+with+Macdonald+and+Martinez-Uribe.htm

Research Data Management Workshop

I am glad to announce the first event organized under the umbrella of the Scoping Digital Repository Services for Research Data Management. This first workshop is aimed at Oxford researchers to hear about good examples and interesting practice on data management across disciplines. So far we have secure an outstanding group of speakers and I am sure it will be a extremely useful event for researchers in Oxford.

To find out more information and register go to : www.ict.ox.ac.uk/odit/projects/digitalrepository/Workshops.xml

Scoping Study Interviews - Call for volunteers

As I mentioned in the previous post, I am conducting interviews from the end of April until mid June and welcome candidates who wish to participate in the study to share the views and issues of their research community.

This is an excellent opportunity for researchers at all levels to specify their requirements for data management services (including creation, storage, sharing, publishing, preservation, etc), so that these can be addressed in future developments.  

If you would like to take part in the scoping study, interviews should not take longer than 1 hour, please get in touch with me at Luis.Martinez-Uribe@oerc.ox.ac.uk

In case you don't have the time to participate in the interviews but still want to comment about your data management needs, you can do so in the previous post. 

Scoping Study - Space for Comments

I am currently conducting interviews until mid June for the Scoping Digital Repository Services for Research Data Management.  These interviews aim to document how researchers at Oxford manage their data and capture their requirements for services to help them doing this more effectively.

We are aware of the busy schedule of our researchers and the impossibility for many of them to participate in these interviews. This is the reason why we invite researchers from Oxford who cannot attend the interviews to use this space to comment on their data management needs.

Please leave your comments below!

A UK Research Data Management Forum

The UK Research Data Management Forum inaugural workshop was organized by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and the Research Information Network (RIN). A mixed audience  formed by staff from data centres, data managers, some research councils, JISC, librarians, repository managers and IT specialists came together to hear about, discuss and share ideas around data management.

Michael Jubb, Director of RIN, gave the keynote address delving on RIN's Research Data Principles. A number of data categorizations were mentioned to show the variety and inconsistency of those and it was highlighted the need to reward researchers for making their data available.

Martin Lewis, Director of Library Services and Librarian at the University of Sheffield , talked about the division of responsibilities between data centres, institutions, libraries and others pointing out the need for a national data strategy. After this he introduced the UK Research Data Service (UKRDS) , a feasibility study to assess costs of a national share service to deal with research data generated in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). It is worth mentioning here that Oxford is participating in the UKRDS as one of the four case studies.

The next presentation brought Mark Thorley, NERC's Data Management Coordinator,  to discuss how to provide appropriate skills in data curation. Mark pointed out the importance of understanding why data needs to be managed to help identifying the skills needed and proposed three key players : researchers, data managers and informaticians. The shortage of data managers and the need to professionalize their career were also issues raised in this presentation.

Finally, the breakout sessions had the mission of discussing the remit of the forum and suggest what could the DCC  do to help providing appropriate skills for data curation. Most attendees agreed on the usefulness of having this forum to discuss practical issues but also recognized that a lobbying group is also required. It was noted throughout the workshop that dealing with the data deluge is a huge task and there is a need to provide evidence of the benefits of curating research data and nurturing a workforce of data managers.