The following is a guest post by Barrie Howard, IT Project Manager at the Library of Congress. This post is part of a series about digital preservation training inspired by the Library’s Digital Preservation Outreach & Education (DPOE) Program. Today I’ll focus on an exceptional individual, who among other things, hosted one of the DPOE […]
Category: training
The NDSR Boston Residents Reflect on their “20% Projects”
The following is a guest post by the entire group of NDSR-Boston residents as listed below. For their final posting, the residents present an overview of their individual professional development projects. Rebecca Fraimow (WGBH) One of the best things about this year’s NDSR in Boston is the mandate to dedicate 20% of our time to […]
DPOE Interview: Jacob Nadal of ReCAP
The following is a guest post by Barrie Howard, IT Project Manager at the Library of Congress. This post is part of a series about digital preservation training inspired by the Library’s Digital Preservation Outreach & Education (DPOE) Program. Today I’ll focus on an exceptional individual, Jacob Nadal, who among other things is one of […]
Bumper week of FOSTER events
It has been a busy week for FOSTER open science events! David Ball and I have been in the Czech Republic speaking at open science days in Prague and Brno. Martin Donnelly spoke at the 2020 vision event in Oxford, and Joy Davidson is involved in a workshop in collaboration with UNESCO on open science for doctoral schools.
The Czech events have been well represented with speakers from current EC projects, including PASTEUR4OA, OpenAIRE and naturally FOSTER. It’s still early days in terms of open access in the Czech Republic. Several universities have publications repositories (usually based on DSpace) but there are few mandates and uptake is slow. The notion of sharing data openly is a big leap and seems a long way off. It was interesting discussing researchers’ attitudes over dinner. Some of the concerns about sharing are the same as elsewhere, but Jan explained there’s a more deep-seated resistance due to historical events. Being open could bring you into conflict with authority so it will take a lot more advocacy than in other contexts to convince researchers of the benefits.
I’ve found that the starting point of openness can be problematic in training events as some attendees immediately switch off if they don’t feel it applies to them and their data. I think this is a concern for FOSTER and the EC’s Open Data Pilot. More perhaps needs to be made of the benefits of data management per se, with open data sharing being one potential outcome where applicable. Even if data can’t be made openly available, they should still be managed. That message needs to come across more strongly.
David Ball gave an introduction to open access and reflected on studies conducted by PASTEUR4OA and FOSTER. One of these studies showed that the vast quantity of published articles (over 75%) are not deposited at all, but deposit rates are over four times higher for institutions with a mandatory policy. So there is clearly a benefit to having an open access policy. David recommended that policies insist on deposit once papers are accepted for publication and link deposit with research evaluation as these criteria are the most effective.
Two key themes to emerge in discussion were the need for advocacy and concerns about open access limiting the choice of where to deposit. When thinking about how best to communicate open access, David recommended avoiding standalone events. Embedding messages into faculty away days, researcher-led events, or meetings that senior management will already be at is preferable. Given the concerns about data sharing, the need for advocacy from research champions and persuasive examples that demonstrate the benefits to be gained will be essential in the Czech context.
Jana Kratěnová from the Technology Centre of the Academy of Sciences spoke about the Horizon 2020 requirements in more detail. She reflected on the tension between what funders requires and what publishers allow. The EC requirements mandate open access and expect publications to be shared within 6 or 12 months depending on the discipline. Some people are concerned about such policies restricting the choice of publisher, for example if researchers want to publish in a high-impact journal that doesn’t offer ‘gold’ options or allow self-archiving in the required timeframes. From the twitter stream it sounds like similar concerns were raised at the Oxford event too.
It was interesting to learn more about the open access position in the Czech Republic. Hana, Petra and their colleagues were excellent hosts. We had time to enjoy a wander around the old towns and were told about the local history. We also sampled the excellent wine and beer brewed at the Czech University of Life Sciences. Very tasty!
Format Migrations at Harvard Library: An NDSR Project Update
The following is a guest post by Joey Heinen, National Digital Stewardship Resident at Harvard University Library. As has been famously outlined by the Library of Congress on their website on sustainability factors for digital formats, digital material is just as susceptible to obsolescence as analog formats. Within digital preservation there are a number of […]
Where are they now? An RDM update from the University of Glasgow
A guest blog post by Mary Donaldson, Research Data Management Services Co-ordinator, University of Glasgow.
Over recent years, central support for research data management (RDM) at the University of Glasgow has been limited. The JISC-funded C4D project which ran until September 2013 provided some basic support, which was augmented with expert advice from the Digital Curation Centre (DCC). We used our DCC institutional engagement to assist with the formulation of our draft Institutional Data Policy and our Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) Roadmap and for help with RDM training. The DCC also helped run a Data Asset Framework (DAF) survey and associated follow-up interviews which allowed us to assess current RDM practices in the University. Joy Davidson and Sarah Jones were invaluable for their support in the early development of RDM awareness at Glasgow.
Between the end of the initial formal engagement with the DCC and late 2014, work to develop and promote RDM at Glasgow has been on an ad hoc basis. In late 2014, the University of Glasgow began appointing an RDM team to run its institutional RDM service and research data registry and repository. The team currently comprises an RDM officer with responsibility for the technical side of operations and an RDM officer with responsibility for the coordination of the service. In June 2015, our team will be complete when a third member, an RDM officer with responsibility for staff training and support, joins us. The RDM team has been working systematically to develop the RDM service on several fronts:
Registry and Repository:
As part of the Cerif for Datasets (C4D) project, Glasgow set up a fledgling Research Data Registry (http://researchdata.gla.ac.uk) using EPrints Repository software. The Registry uses a metadata specification developed during the C4D project working with other EPrints sites to agree standard functionality. The data registry has various functionality to help researchers manage their research data, including the capability to mint Digital Object Identfiers (DOIs) for data.
Following the appointment of the Glasgow RDM team in late 2014, the Registry has been augmented by data archiving capability provided by Arkivum, and using the Arkivum EPrints plugin to seamlessly link the Registry with off-site Arkivum storage.
Plans for the coming months include: linking research data with research publications and theses, building on work carried out by University of London Computer Centre and University of East London; linking research data with University staff profile pages; enhanced Registry front-end to include a responsive design so that researchers can use the registry across multiple devices; and iterative development of data ingest and curation procedures as more datasets come through the Registry and workflows are tested and revised.
Researcher Engagement:
With the looming 1st May 2015 deadline for the EPSRC expectations, the majority of our researcher engagement activities this year have been focussed on EPSRC-funded researchers. We have been contacting EPSRC-funded researchers to offer face-to-face meetings with a member of the RDM team to clarify funder expectations and to explain how the RDM service can help. Through these meetings, we have identified a few examples of really good practice and have cultivated these researchers as ‘data management champions’ who are willing to speak at RDM engagement events about how they go about RDM activities. We also take opportunities to go and speak at researcher gatherings to raise the profile of RDM within the University’s research community. In addition to our proactive work with EPSRC-funded researchers, our services are also available to all other research staff in the University. In recent weeks, with the release of the ESRC Data Policy, we have been looking at ways in which we can engage with ESRC-funded researchers at Glasgow. We anticipate that as compliance with the EPSRC and ESRC requirements becomes part of the normal research workflow, we’ll turn our attention to other RCUK-funded researchers. We are also working with the Open Access Service to coordinate our service offerings and to reduce the number of emails being received by research staff.
Training Offering:
Recently we have been working on extending our researcher training offering to make sure we cover all aspects of RDM and the data lifecycle, and make this training available to researchers at all stages of their careers.
Through the Staff Development Service, we will be increasing access opportunities to the existing workshop- ‘Managing Research Data’ and we will also be offering a new workshop – ‘Data Management Planning’. We will also be contributing appropriate material to several other workshops run by the Staff Development Service.
Through the Graduate Schools, we will be offering workshops on Research Data Management for Postgraduate researchers. We will also be contributing appropriate material to other training courses offered by the Graduate Schools.
In addition we will be delivering training to staff and student groups within the University such as the Early Career Researcher Fellowship Application Mentoring Group.
Service coordination:
We are continuing to work with other services at Glasgow to ensure that consideration is given to RDM at the appropriate times in a research project lifecycle. With the contracts team we have agreed wording for collaboration agreements that makes provision for data sharing at the end of the project. We are also working with the University Ethics Committee to inform them of RDM considerations that they might need to take into account when considering applications, and with the Research Support Office to get researchers to complete a Data Management Plan for their project and to cost for RDM when making funding bids.
We have also made two successful proposals to the Research Strategy and Planning Committee:
- To put the responsibility for the quality assurance of our data curations processes within the remit of our Vice Principal for Research and Enterprise.
- To strongly encourage all researchers within the University of Glasgow to prepare data management plans for their projects, regardless of whether this is required by their funders as part of the application process.
Future aspirations:
- To ensure all researchers have access to support to facilitate compliance with funder requirements and good data management practice?
- To extend the University of Glasgow-specific guidance in DMPonline.
- To fully embed data management and planning into the normal workflow of researchers at Glasgow.
- To update our training offering and resources with examples of best RDM practice from within our own research community.
Image credits: Glasgow University image CC-BY by Raymond McCrae and registry record (c) Mary Donaldson
Residents Chosen for NDSR 2015 in Washington, DC
We are pleased to announce that the Washington, DC National Digital Stewardship Residency class for 2015 has now been chosen! Five very accomplished people have been selected from a highly competitive field of candidates. The new residents will arrive in Washington, DC this June to begin the program. Updates on the program, including more information […]
DPOE Interview with Sam Meister
The following is a guest post by Barrie Howard, IT Project Manager at the Library of Congress. This interview is part of a series about digital preservation training inspired by the Library’s Digital Preservation Outreach & Education (DPOE) Program. Today’s interview is with Sam Meister, University of Montana-Missoula, who is a DPOE Train-the-Trainer Workshop instructor […]
IDCC15 session A2: Curation Infrastructure, Education and Training
Session A2 provided two analyses of the current priorities and workflows of researchers as they go about their research activity. In both cases, the findings have potential use in improving institutional support for digital curation and research …
Boxes of Hard Drives and Other Challenges at WGBH: An NDSR Project Update
The following is a guest post by Rebecca Fraimow, National Digital Stewardship Resident at WGBH in Boston I have a pretty comprehensive list of goals to accomplish over the course of my time as the National Digital Stewardship Resident at WGBH’s Media, Library and Archives. That is: Document WGBH’s existing ingest workflow for production media […]