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Research Data Management for Support Staff. Jonathan Rans & Kerry Miller, Digital Curation Centre. About this course. Short presentations with exercises and discussion Five main sections Research data and RDM (30 mins ) RDM at Surrey ( 15 mins ) Skills exercise
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Research Data Management for Support Staff Jonathan Rans & Kerry Miller, Digital Curation Centre
About this course • Short presentations with exercises and discussion • Five main sections • Research data and RDM (30 mins) • RDM at Surrey (15 mins) • Skills exercise • Data Management Planning (30 mins) • Data sharing (30 mins) • Breakout sessions – • Practical DMP support or Metadata and Documentation • Lunch @ 13:30
Introductions Introduce yourself and offer a reflection on the questions: • What is your understanding of research? • Do you know anything about data management? • What do you want to find out today? • How do you see yourself supporting RDM?
So, what is meantby ‘research data’? Anything & everything produced in the course of research
Defining research data • Research data are collected, observed or created, for the purposes of analysis to produce and validate original research results • Both analogue and digital materials are 'data' • Lab notebooks and software may be classed as 'data' • Digital data can be: • created in a digital form ('born digital') • converted to a digital form (digitised)
Types of research data • Instrument measurements • Experimental observations • Still images, video and audio • Text documents, spreadsheets, databases • Quantitative data (e.g. household survey data) • Survey results & interview transcripts • Simulation data, models & software • Slides, artefacts, specimens, samples • Sketches, diaries, lab notebooks …
What is data management? “the active management and appraisal of data over the lifecycle of scholarly and scientific interest” Digital Curation Centre
What is involved in research data management (RDM)? • Data Management Planning • Creating data • Documenting data • Accessing / using data • Storage and backup • Sharing data • Preserving data
What do research funders expect? http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/policy-and-legal/overview-funders-data-policies
RDM principles and advice to share with researchers n.b. Data Management Planning and Data Sharing are covered in separate sections See in particular: UK Data Archive, Managing and sharing data: best practice for researchers http://data-archive.ac.uk/media/2894/managingsharing.pdf
Data creation • Decide what data will be created and how - this should be communicated to the whole research team • Develop procedures for consistency and data quality • Choose appropriate software and formats - some are better for long-term preservation and reuse • Ensure consent forms, licences and partnership agreements don’t limit options to share data if desired
Documentation • Collect together all the information users would need to understand and reuse the data • Create metadata at the time - it’s hard to do later • Use standards where possible • Name, structure and version files clearly
Access and use • Restrict access to those who need to read/edit data • Consider the data security implications of where you store data and from which devices you access files • Choose appropriate methods to transfer / share data • filestores & encrypted media rather than email & Dropbox
Storage and backup • Use managed services where possible e.g. Surreyshared drives rather than local or external hard drives • Ask the local IT team for advice • 3… 2… 1… backup! • at least 3 copies of a file • on at least 2 different media • with at least 1 offsite
Data selection • It’s not possible – or desirable - to keep everything. • Select based on: • What has to be kept e.g. data underlying publications • What legally must be destroyed • What can’t be recreated e.g. environmental recordings • What is potentially useful to others • The scientific or historical value
Guidance on selection and appraisal http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides https://intranet.birmingham.ac.uk/as/libraryservices/records/guidelines.aspx http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/sites/data/documents/data-value-checklist.pdf
Data preservation • Be aware of requirements to preserve data • Consult and work with experts in this field • Use available subject repositories, data centres and structured databases • http://databib.org • http://www.re3data.org/ • http://www.zenodo.org
How are support staff engaging in RDM? • Defining institutional strategy and policy • Implementing infrastructure • Advising researchers • Developing and delivering training • Supporting data management planning • Supporting data sharing • ... • www.dcc.ac.uk/community/institutional-engagements Research Office Library IT
When does RDM engagement happen? • Responding to researcher requests • Institutional support projects • Fulfilling funder requirements • FOI requests • Etc.
Exercise: skills to support RDM • Based on the activities we discussed earlier, consider who may have relevant skills or expertise to share. • You have 15 minutes
Acknowledgement • This Training has been adapted from the RDM for Librarians course created jointly by the DCC and the University of Northampton. Full details at: http://www.dcc.ac.uk/training/rdm-librarians
Acknowledgement Ideas and content have been taken from various courses: • Skills matrix, ADMIRe project, University of Nottingham http://admire.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2012/09/18/rdmnottingham-training-event • DIY Training Kit for Librarians, University of Edinburgh http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra/libtraining.html • Managing your research data, Research360, University of Bath http://opus.bath.ac.uk/32296 • RDMRose Lite, University of Sheffield http://rdmrose.group.shef.ac.uk/?page_id=364 • RoaDMaP training materials, University of Leeds http://library.leeds.ac.uk/roadmap-project-outputs • SupportDM modules, University of East London http://www.uel.ac.uk/trad/outputs/resources