Advancing research data publishing practices for the social sciences: from archive activity to empowering researchers

Sharing and publishing social science research data have a long history in the UK, through long-standing agreements with government agencies for sharing survey data and the data policy, infrastructure, and data services supported by the Economic and Social Research Council. The UK Data Service and its predecessors developed data management, documentation, and publishing procedures and protocols that stand today as robust templates for data publishing. As the ESRC research data policy requires grant holders to submit their research data to the UK Data Service after a grant ends, setting standards and promoting them has been essential in raising the quality of the resulting research data being published. In the past, received data were all processed, documented, and published for reuse in-house. Recent investments have focused on guiding and training researchers in good data management practices and skills for creating shareable data, as well as a self-publishing repository system, ReShare. ReShare also receives data sets described in published data papers and achieves scientific quality assurance through peer review of submitted data sets before publication. Social science data are reused for research, to inform policy, in teaching and for methods learning. Over a 10 years period, responsive developments in system workflows, access control options, persistent identifiers, templates, and checks, together with targeted guidance for researchers, have helped raise the standard of self-publishing social science data. Lessons learned and developments in shifting publishing social science data from an archivist responsibility to a researcher process are showcased, as inspiration for institutions setting up a data repository

Creating Shareable Research Data Training in Kyrgyzstan

In March 2018, during the local Spring break, Veerle Van Den Eynden and Louise Corti from the UK Data Service visited Kyrgyzstan to provide training on research data sharing. The main focus of their visit was to support creating a large collection of sensitive interviews, case studies and focus group discussions from the national Gender in Society Perceptions Study (GSPS). This followed an enquiry by United Nations (UN) Women Country Office in the Kyrgyz Republic a year ago. Veerle and Louise offered advice on anonymization and sharing of the data and the possibility of using the UK Data Service as a place of deposit due to there being no full-fledged Kyrgyzstani data repository. This was followed up with a training workshop to advance the data management and sharing capacity in the country, organised by the Principal Investigator of the study, Meghan McCormack, who is also a law lecturer at the American University of Central Asia (AUCA). The training event was supported by AMICAL (American International Consortium of Academic Libraries) with the UK Data Archive offering pro-bono training time for Veerle and Louise

Sharing social data in multidisciplinary, multi-stakeholder research: Best practice guide for researchers

There is an increasing drive for openness and sharing of data, with funders and other stakeholders expecting publicly-funded data to be available for further use. Science benefits from data being maximally available as a resource for new and future research and technological advances make it easier for digital information and data to be discoverable and accessible to a very wide audience. Equally, sharing information and data amongst stakeholders is fundamental in collaborative and multi-stakeholder projects. Yet sharing data collected from human participants (e.g. through surveys, questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, participatory methods, video) can present ethical challenges as they often contain personal or confidential information. In multi-disciplinary projects, the collection of social data in conjunction with geospatial information may make it very difficult or impossible to conceal the identity of participants or fieldwork locations. Appropriate procedures are needed to maximise opportunities for future use. This guide seeks to support researchers, consultants and evaluators in sharing their data widely by highlighting key considerations and providing helpful tips, from the planning stages of research and evaluation through to the possible deposit of data with a data repository

Show me the data: the pilot UK Research Data Registry

The UK Research Data (Metadata) Registry pilot project is implementing a prototype registry for the UK's research data assets, enabling the holdings of subject-based data centres and institutional data repositories alike to be searched from a single location. The purpose of the prototype is to prove the concept of the registry and uncover challenges that will need to be addressed if and when the registry is developed into a sustainable service. The prototype is being tested using metadata records harvested from nine UK data centres and the data repositories of nine UK universities

Research Data @ Essex Final Report

The Research Data @Essex project, funded under the JISC Managing Research Data Programme, piloted the development of a research data management and sharing infrastructure for the University of Essex. We developed an institutional research data repository, Essex Research Data (built on the EPrints institutional repository software; and in collaboration with the EPrints team at Southampton released the data repository App ‘ReCollect’ via the EPrints bazaar. This App allows institutions to set up their own EPrints-based data repository. Extensive in-house customisation was done to make the EPrints software - initially developed for hosting research publications - more suitable for storing and presenting research data. Development has focused on expanding the EPrints metadata profile to allow the capture of detail necessary for describing a wide diversity of research data collections, while also meeting standards relevant to UK Higher Education. The metadata profile adopted is based on DataCite (2012) and the European INSPIRE metadata schema (INSPIRE, 2009), and is compliant with the international specification Data Documentation Initiative 2.1. (DDI, 2011), used by the UK Data Archive and every social science data archive around the world. In addition, the user interface was adapted to showcase complex collections consisting of many files and associated metadata, alongside a refined deposit workflow. Work also included the evaluation and selection of suitable licensing agreements for research data; methodologies for attaching persistent identifiers to the data collections, including DataCite Digital Object Identifiers; and the development of a user guide for preparing and depositing research data in such institutional repository. The project team, led by the UK Data Archive, included staff from Information Systems & Services (ISS), the Research and Enterprise Office (REO) and Records Management at the University of Essex. We worked closely with four of the university’s research-rich departments: Biological Sciences, Essex Business School, Language & Linguistics and Computing & Electronic Systems. This involved evaluating current research data management and sharing practices, as well as ingesting representative sample data into the pilot repository, including proteomics and bio-imaging data, socio- linguistic data, artificial intelligence data and management research data. Close working with researchers ensured ample testing and polishing of the software. Besides the repository development, the project also developed an institutional data management policy for the university and a roadmap for compliance with the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) policy framework on research data. Data management guidance and training are also provided for the university’s research community

Data Management Planning for ESRC Research Data-rich Investments project (DMP-ESRC)

This project, funded by JISC under the Managing Research Data Programme, has been strengthening data management and sharing capability in the social sciences community. The UK Data Archive worked with four Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) large research investments: New Dynamics of Ageing (NDA) Programme Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) Centre for Social and Economic Research on Innovation in Genomics (Innogen) Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC) We developed data management planning guidance for these research hubs, in line with the new ESRC Research data policy, to ensure that the high quality research data they produce can be made available for wider reuse. After evaluating existing data management practices by researchers, we helped develop for each centre and programme a tailored set of data management recommendations and a planning strategy. These support existing good practice and direct hubs to resources or tools that address data management weaknesses. By comparing the specific strategies and distilling common elements, we were also able to develop generic data management recommendations for research centres and programmes. We gave customised training – in response to requests from the hubs – on relevant data management topics: how to prepare research data for archiving; Q&A session for centre researchers on the data management planning recommendations made; recommendations for managing qualitative research data using NVivo software. Although we found good data management practices to exist, these are idiosyncratic and variable between researchers and largely the responsibility of individual researchers. Many researchers are capable data managers, not necessarily referring to the research or project management practices they implement as ‘data management’. However, good practices need to be exchanged much more between colleague researchers and implemented more systematically. Whilst many researchers have a positive attitude to sharing data formally or informally, good intentions need to be translated into more effective data sharing strategies. Research project leaders and centre directors need to take responsibility for co-ordinating core data management aspects (data security, backup strategy, formatting), a system to keep track of all research data being created or acquired, ensuring data management roles and responsibilities are allocated and providing a framework of standard practices, policies and tools. We delivered various resources for use to help implement such framework. Projects can retain flexibility where needed (e.g. consent practices across disciplines). Core project outputs are: • Report on Data Management Practices in the Social Sciences, based on interviews with directors and researchers of past and present centres and programmes • ESRC approved Data Management Recommendations for Research Centres and Programmes, aligned with the ESRC Research data policy • Data inventory template and model data management resources library • Guidance for ESRC applicants and reviewers on data management planning to support the ESRC Research Data Policy, incorporated in online Je-S form and on ESDS website • Activity-based data management costing tool to help calculate costs of data management above standard research procedures • New edition (3rd) of the UK Data Archive’s Managing and Sharing Data guide, fully revised and with new content on data management planning, strategies for large-scale research investments, and data management for collaborative research • New content and resources for the UK Data Archive’s Create and Manage web pages