The Shifting Research Data Management Policy Landscape Joy Davidson and Sarah Jones

1. The Shifting Research Data Management Policy Landscape Joy Davidson and Sarah Jones Digital Curation Centre, Glasgow joy.davidson@glasgow.ac.uk sarah.jones@glasgow.ac.uk

2. Digital Curation Centre Jisc-funded consortium comprising units from the Universities of Bath (UKOLN) Edinburgh (DCC Centre) Glasgow (HATII) Launched 1st March 2004 as a national centre for solving challenges in digital curation that could not be tackled by any single institution or discipline

3. “the active management and appraisal of data over the lifecycle of scholarly and scientific interest” Data have importance as the evidential base of scholarly conclusions Curation is part of good research practice What is data curation?

4. Take a minute and jot down something that you think qualifies as ‘data’. But, what is data?

5. Research data can be anything! • models and visualisations • Workflows (Taverna, MyExperiment) • databases • raw data (captured from instruments) • cleaned data (anonymised) • blogs, tweets • images • audio • Whatever researchers are producing!

6. Why does anyone need to curate data? declaration data are a public good and should be openly available Code of good research conduct data should be preserved and accessible for 10 years + Funders’ data policies www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/policy-and-legal/funders-data-policies Common principles on data policy www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/Pages/ DataPolicy.aspx

7. Funders’ data policies http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/policy-and-legal/overview-funders-data-policies

8. Not just sticks, there are carrots too! Help prevent data loss Enable validation of results More citations: 69% ↑ (Piwowar, 2007 in PLoS) Easier to do your work…

9. Who is responsible for RDM? Funders Advisory bodies Data centres Research Organisations Support services Publishers Researchers

10. Components of a research data service £ Advocacy (senior mgmt & researcher) Tools Support staff & services Metadata and documentation Research environment& systems Storage Back-up Access Archive Preserve & Share RDM policies Training and guides

11. Components of a research data service RDM policies

12. Early research data policies “Statement of commitment”  Infrastructure  policy legal compliance style a section in uni DM policy useful guide as appendix “10 commandments” mutual promises aspirational Based on Edin. with a few additions Baseline of RCUK Code + procedures & support www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/policy-and-legal/institutional-data-policies

13. http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/datamanagement/rdm-at-gu

15. Data Management Planning • Key questions: • what data will be created? • how much storage is needed? • where will data be stored in the short and longer term? • are there ethical issues that require consent? • Most funders expect data management & sharing plans at the grant application stage!

16. Components of a research data service Tools Research environment& systems

17. Data management planning

18. Storing data Key questions: What is available? What facilities is needed? • remote access to work from home • file sharing with others • high-levels of security for sensitive data How will the data be backed up?

19. Active research stage – an ‘academic dropbox’ National level negotiation via Janet brokerage? Piloted at Lincoln & Edinburgh http://tiny.cc/owncloud-pilot www.dataflow.ox.ac.uk

20. Metadata & documentation • Key questions: • What information do users need to understand the data? • descriptions of all variables / fields and their values • code labels, classification schema, abbreviations list • information about the project and data creators • tips on usage e.g. exceptions, quirks, questionable results • How will this capture this and who will capture/record it? • Are there standards that need to be followed?

21. Guidance: • Create metadata at the time – it’s hard to do later • Use standards for interoperability • Develop processes so everyone does the same • Record contextual information in a text file (such as a • ‘read me’ file) in the same directory as the data • Think about how to name, structure & version your files • www.jiscdigitalmedia.ac.uk/crossmedia/advice/choosing-a-file-name

22. Components of a research data service Archive Preserve & Share

23. Selecting what to keep • Key questions: • What data must be kept? (for validation, etc) • What must not be kept? (e.g. personal data) • Is it worth keeping the data? – cost/benefits • Where will the data be kept?

24. Archiving – institutional data repositories Not intended to replace national, subject or other established data collections Acknowledge hybrid environment http://datashare.is.ed.ac.uk Essex-RDR and DataPool at Southampton www.dspace.cam.ac.uk/ • https://databank.ora.ox.ac.uk

25. Archiving – external data centres Research funders’ data centres… Structured databases Disciplinary& community initiatives List of data centres: http://databib.org

26. Data catalogues (finding data) Develop a research data extension to the cerif standard http://cerif4datasets.wordpress.com JISC & DCC planning National coordination

27. GU research data catalogue

28. Components of a research data service Training and guides

29. Guidance and training http://www.gla.ac.uk/services/datamanagement/

30. Disciplinary training (RDMTrain) http://www.dcc.ac.uk/training/train-trainer/disciplinary-rdm-training/disciplinary-rdm-training

31. Good data management is about making informed decisions

32. For DCC guidance, tools and case studies see: www.dcc.ac.uk/resources Follow us on twitter @digitalcuration and #ukdcc Any questions?