Project StORe: expectations, a solution and some predicted impact from opening up the research data portfolio

Presented at Libraries without walls 7 Lesvos, 14-18 September 2007Presentation slides for talk given at the 2007 Libraries without Walls conferenc

A Maturing Process of Engagement: Raising Data Capabilities in UK Higher Education

In the spring of 2011, the UK’s Digital Curation Centre (DCC) commenced a programme of outreach designed to assist individual universities in their development of aptitude for managing research data. This paper describes the approaches taken, covering the context in which these institutional engagements have been discharged and examining the aims, methodology and processes employed. It also explores what has worked and why, as well as the pitfalls encountered, including example outcomes and identifiable or predicted impact. Observing how the research data landscape is constantly undergoing change, the paper concludes with an indication of the steps being taken to refit the DCC institutional engagement to the evolving needs of higher education

Some Challenges for eScience Liaison

The Digital Curation Centre’s promotion of expertise and good practice in digital data curation is no mere exercise in theory. Through its new eScience Liaison initiative the DCC has kept a close eye on its founding principle, that the necessity for the physical and life sciences to share access to digital research resources is due mainly to issues characteristic of eScience. This article describes some of the principal liaison activities that have been addressed within that community since the summer of 2007

In brief: Project StORe

Project StORe is one of twenty-five projects supported in the UK by the JISC (http://www.jisc.ac.uk) Digital Repositories Programme, which aims to bring together people and practices from across the domains of research, learning, information services, institutional administration and records management, for the purpose of ensuring maximum coordination in the development of digital repositories

Multi-scale Data Sharing in the Life Sciences: Some Lessons for Policy Makers

Drawing on the final report on a recent series of case studies in the life sciences at the University of Edinburgh, this paper explores the attitudes and perceptions of researchers towards data sharing and contrasts these with the policies of the major research funders. Notwithstanding economic, technical and cultural inhibitors, the general ethos in the Life Sciences is one of support to the principle of data sharing. However, this position is subject to a complex range of qualifications, not least the crucial need for sharing through collaboration. The kind of generic vision for data sharing that is currently promoted by national agencies is judged to be neither productive nor effective.  Only close engagement with research practitioners in the identification of bottom-up strategies that preserve the exercise of informed choice - a fundamental and persistent element of scientific research - will produce change on a national scale

CARMEN [Code, Analysis, Repository & Modelling for e-Neuroscience]

The CARMEN pilot project seeks to create a virtual laboratory for experimental neurophysiology, enabling the sharing and collaborative exploitation of data, analysis code and expertise. This study by the DCC contributes to an understanding of the data curation requirements of the eScience community, through its extended observation of the CARMEN neurophysiology community’s specification and selection of solutions for the organisation, access and curation of digital research output

Attitudes and Aspirations in a Diverse World: The Project StORe Perspective on Scientific Repositories

Project StORe was conceived as an initiative to apply digital library technologies in the creation of new value for published research. Ostensibly a technical project, its primary objective was the design of middleware to enable bi-directional links between source repositories containing research data and output repositories containing research publications. Hence, researchers would be able to navigate directly from within an electronic article to the source or synthesised data from which that article was derived. To achieve a product that directly reflects user needs, a survey of researchers was conducted across seven scientific disciplines. This survey exposed the spectrum of cultural pressures, preferences and prejudices that influence the research process, as well as a range of practices in the production and management of research data. Aspects of the research environment revealed by the survey are considered in this paper in the context of repository use and, more broadly, the requirements, roles and responsibilities necessary to good data management

Skilling Up to Do Data: Whose Role, Whose Responsibility, Whose Career?

What are the roles necessary to effective data management and what kinds of expertise are needed by the researchers and data specialists who are filling those roles?  These questions were posed at a workshop of data creators and curators whose delegates challenged the DCC and RIN to identify the training needs and career opportunities for the broad cohort that finds itself working in data management – sometimes by design but more often by accident.  This paper revisits previous investigations into the roles and responsibilities required by a “data workforce”, presents a representative spectrum of informed opinion from the DCC Research Data Management Forum, and makes some recommendations for raising capability, capacity and status

Open Science in Practice: Researcher Perspectives and Participation

We report on an exploratory study consisting of brief case studies in selected disciplines, examining what motivates researchers to work (or want to work) in an open manner with regard to their data, results and protocols, and whether advantages are delivered by working in this way. We review the policy background to open science, and literature on the benefits attributed to open data, considering how these relate to curation and to questions of who participates in science. The case studies investigate the perceived benefits to researchers, research institutions and funding bodies of utilising open scientific methods, the disincentives and barriers, and the degree to which there is evidence to support these perceptions. Six case study groups were selected in astronomy, bioinformatics, chemistry, epidemiology, language technology and neuroimaging. The studies identify relevant examples and issues through qualitative analysis of interview transcripts. We provide a typology of degrees of open working across the research lifecycle, and conclude that better support for open working, through guidelines to assist research groups in identifying the value and costs of working more openly, and further research to assess the risks, incentives and shifts in responsibility entailed by opening up the research process are needed