29,214 research outputs found
Enabling quantitative data analysis through e-infrastructures
This paper discusses how quantitative data analysis in the social sciences can engage with and exploit an e-Infrastructure. We highlight how a number of activities which are central to quantitative data analysis, referred to as âdata managementâ, can benefit from e-infrastructure support. We conclude by discussing how these issues are relevant to the DAMES (Data Management through e-Social Science) research Node, an ongoing project that aims to develop e-Infrastructural resources for quantitative data analysis in the social sciences
Development of a pilot data management infrastructure for biomedical researchers at University of Manchester â approach, findings, challenges and outlook of the MaDAM Project
Management and curation of digital data has been becoming ever more important in a higher education and research environment characterised by large and complex data, demand for more interdisciplinary and collaborative work, extended funder requirements and use of e-infrastructures to facilitate new research methods and paradigms. This paper presents the approach, technical infrastructure, findings, challenges and outlook (including future development within the successor project, MiSS) of the âMaDAM: Pilot data management infrastructure for biomedical researchers at University of Manchesterâ project funded under the infrastructure strand of the JISC Managing Research Data (JISCMRD) programme. MaDAM developed a pilot research data management solution at the University of Manchester based on biomedical researchersâ requirements, which includes technical and governance components with the flexibility to meet future needs across multiple research groups and disciplines
Recommended from our members
The National Transport Data Framework
Report by Professor Peter Landshoff (Cambridge University) and
Professor John Polak (Imperial College London) on a project for
the Department for Transport.
emails: [email protected] [email protected] NTDF is designed to be a resource for data owners to deposit descriptions
into a central catalogue, so that people can search for data and find data
and understand their characteristics. The value of this is to individuals, to
commercial organizations, and to public bodies. For example, services that
provide better information to travellers will help to make their journey
less stressful and persuade them to make more use of public transport.
Transport operators need very diverse information to help them
plan developments to their services: demographic, geographical, economic etc.
And policy makers need a similar range of information to help them decide
how to divide their budget and afterwards to evaluate how valuable it has
been.This work was supported by the Department for Transport (DfT)
PhenDisco: phenotype discovery system for the database of genotypes and phenotypes.
The database of genotypes and phenotypes (dbGaP) developed by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) is a resource that contains information on various genome-wide association studies (GWAS) and is currently available via NCBI's dbGaP Entrez interface. The database is an important resource, providing GWAS data that can be used for new exploratory research or cross-study validation by authorized users. However, finding studies relevant to a particular phenotype of interest is challenging, as phenotype information is presented in a non-standardized way. To address this issue, we developed PhenDisco (phenotype discoverer), a new information retrieval system for dbGaP. PhenDisco consists of two main components: (1) text processing tools that standardize phenotype variables and study metadata, and (2) information retrieval tools that support queries from users and return ranked results. In a preliminary comparison involving 18 search scenarios, PhenDisco showed promising performance for both unranked and ranked search comparisons with dbGaP's search engine Entrez. The system can be accessed at http://pfindr.net
Personalised service? Changing the role of the government librarian
Investigates the feasibility of personalised information service in a government department. A qualitative methodology explored stakeholder opinions on the remit, marketing, resourcing and measurement of the service. A questionnaire and interviews gathered experiences of personalised provision across the government sector. Potential users were similarly surveyed to discuss how the service could meet their needs. Data were analysed using coding techniques to identify emerging theory. Lessons learned from government librarians centred on clarifying requirements, balancing workloads and selective marketing. The user survey showed low usage and awareness of existing specialist services, but high levels of need and interest in services repackaged as a tailored offering. Fieldwork confirmed findings from the literature on the scope for adding value through information management advice, information skills training and substantive research assistance and the need to understand business processes and develop effective partnerships. Concluding recommendations focus on service definition, strategic marketing, resource utilisation and performance measurement
On-Demand Big Data Integration: A Hybrid ETL Approach for Reproducible Scientific Research
Scientific research requires access, analysis, and sharing of data that is
distributed across various heterogeneous data sources at the scale of the
Internet. An eager ETL process constructs an integrated data repository as its
first step, integrating and loading data in its entirety from the data sources.
The bootstrapping of this process is not efficient for scientific research that
requires access to data from very large and typically numerous distributed data
sources. a lazy ETL process loads only the metadata, but still eagerly. Lazy
ETL is faster in bootstrapping. However, queries on the integrated data
repository of eager ETL perform faster, due to the availability of the entire
data beforehand.
In this paper, we propose a novel ETL approach for scientific data
integration, as a hybrid of eager and lazy ETL approaches, and applied both to
data as well as metadata. This way, Hybrid ETL supports incremental integration
and loading of metadata and data from the data sources. We incorporate a
human-in-the-loop approach, to enhance the hybrid ETL, with selective data
integration driven by the user queries and sharing of integrated data between
users. We implement our hybrid ETL approach in a prototype platform, Obidos,
and evaluate it in the context of data sharing for medical research. Obidos
outperforms both the eager ETL and lazy ETL approaches, for scientific research
data integration and sharing, through its selective loading of data and
metadata, while storing the integrated data in a scalable integrated data
repository.Comment: Pre-print Submitted to the DMAH Special Issue of the Springer DAPD
Journa
- âŚ