Open Research Data

Open Research Data - A step by step guide through the research data lifecycle, data set creation, big data vs long-tail, metadata, data centres/data repositories, open access for data, data sharing, data citation and publication.The autumn training school Development and Promotion of Open Access to Scientific Information and Research is organized in the frame of the Fourth International Conference on Digital Presentation and Preservation of Cultural and Scientific Heritage—DiPP2014 (September 18–21, 2014, Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria, http://dipp2014.math.bas.bg/), organized under the UNESCO patronage. The main organiser is the Institute of Mathematics and Informatics, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences with the support of EU project FOSTER (http://www.fosteropenscience.eu/) and the P. R. Slaveykov Regional Public Library in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria

Data Citation and Sharing: What’s in it for me?

Research funders, data managers, librarians, journal editors and researchers themselves are calling for a change in the culture of research to ensure formal data citation is the norm, rather than the exception. Sarah Callaghan looks at the reasons for and against a more fluid data environment and finds that as well as being good for science, data sharing is also good for the scientist

Fractal modelling of rain fields: From event on demand to annual statistics

A poster to show the fractal modelling of rain fields. Radio systems operating at frequencies of above 10 GHz are adversely affected by rain, clouds and atmospheric gases. As the radio spectrum below 10 GHz becomes increasingly congested, there is significant pressure to open up these higher frequencies to commercial exploitation. Rain fade mitigation techniques (FMT) such as adaptive transmit power control are often suggested as methods of improving spectrum efficiency, either through allowing exploitation of higher frequency bands, or through improving the packing density of terrestrial links at lower bands. However, in order to accurately implement these FMT, detailed knowledge of the spatio-temporal variation of rain fields is required, on scales of hundreds of metres and timescales of the order of seconds. As yet, radar rain maps at these resolutions are not available, hence the need for accurate simulated rain fields

Joint declaration of data citation principles

A poster highlighting joint declaration of data citation principles. Purpose Importance: Data should be considered legitimate, citable products of research. Data citations should be accorded the same importance in the scholarly record as citations of other research objects, such as publications. Credit and attribution: Data citations should facilitate giving scholarly credit and normative and legal attribution to all contributors to the data, recognizing that a single style or mechanism of attribution may not be applicable to all data. Evidence. In scholarly literature, whenever and wherever a claim relies upon data, the corresponding data should be cited. Function 4. Unique Identification. A data citation should include a persistent method for identification that is machine-actionable, globally unique, and widely used by a community. 5. Access. Data citations should facilitate access to the data themselves and to such associated metadata, documentation, code, and other materials, as are necessary for both humans and machines to make informed use of the referenced data. Attributes 6. Persistence. Unique identifiers, and metadata describing the data and its disposition, should persist -- even beyond the lifespan of the data they describe [6]. 7. Specificity and verifiability. Data citations should facilitate identification of, access to, and verification of the specific data that support a claim. Citations or citation metadata should include information about provenance and fixity sufficient to facilitate verifying that the specific timeslice, version and/or granular portion of data retrieved subsequently is the same as was originally cited. 8. Interoperability and flexibility. Data citation methods should be sufficiently flexible to accommodate the variant practices among communities, but should not differ so much that they compromise interoperability of data citation practices across communities

Synthesis of Two Dimensional Rain Fields for Systems using Spatial Diversity

A poster describing the synthesis of two dimensional rain fields for systems using spatial diversity. Radio communications systems operating at 10 GHz and above suffer significant impairment due to rain, clouds and atmospheric gases. This attenuation is unlikely to be compensated for by fade margin alone. Fade Mitigation Techniques such as site and route diversity rely on the temporal and spatial inhomogeneity of rain to improve the availability of a system. To correctly configure such a system to optimise the availability and minimize the cost requires detailed knowledge of typical rain fields. In some cases it is sometimes more convenient to use simulated data for the testing and development of a system. Cascade models have been proposed as a computationally effective method of performing such simulations, and have also been shown to produce the same statistics as real rain fields

STFC Centre for Environmental Data Archival (CEDA) Annual Report 2013 (April 2012-March 2013)

The mission of the Centre for Environmental Archival (CEDA) is to deliver long term curation of scientifically important environmental data at the same time as facilitating the use of data by the environmental science community. CEDA was established by the amalgamation of the activities of two of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) designated data centres: the British Atmospheric Data Centre, and the NERC Earth Observation Data Centre. We are pleased to present here our fourth annual report, covering activities for the 2013 year (April 2012 to March 2013). The report consists of two sections and appendices, the first section broadly providing a summary of activities and some statistics with some short descriptions of some significant activities, and a second section introducing some exemplar projects and activities. The report concludes with additional details of activities such as publications, software maintained etc

New Spaces: Safeguarding Students from Violence and Hate

Full report of the HEFCE Catalyst funded projectSexual assault, harassment, violence and hate crime on university campuses is a prevalent and pressing concern. A recent Universities UK taskforce report recommended that urgent action in this area is needed. Universities are significant sites for implementing a joined-up approach and tackling these issues. As a campus of Changemakers, students, inter-disciplinary researchers, professional and support staff at The University of Northampton decided to take action to address these significant and important issues, in particular within the context of a major campus move to a town centre location. As one of only 60 institutions across the country to be awarded funding from HEFCE’s Catalyst fund, this ‘New Spaces: Safeguarding Students from Violence and Hate’ cross collaborative project aimed to create vital partnerships in tackling sexual violence and hate crime on campus. The aims of the project were to evaluate existing policies and develop a student-led collaborative approach to identify what currently happens when disclosures are made; staff and student perceptions, knowledge and experiences within the campus transition; as well as providing recommendations for new institutional policies, strategies and recommendations to support students in reporting harassment, sexual abuse, sexual violence and hate crime. This project also contributes to HEFCE’s wider work in creating guidelines and recommendations for HEIs for addressing these issues. A survey of the published literature, as well as an evaluation of existing processes and policies at The University of Northampton were carried out within this project. Data collection involved 2 Staff and 2 student focus groups, as well as 11 interviews with members of the university management team. These were conducted to discuss staff and student experiences, what support was in place for disclosures and recommendations for future practice within the transition to the new campus. One of the student focus groups utilised photo-elicitation methods to allow students to visually conceptualise and create a new, safe campus space. Recommendations are provided for understanding the prevalence of these issues within a campus context; tackle normative beliefs which may influence how they are perceived; increasing knowledge and awareness of sexual violence and hate crime; implementing mechanisms for disclosure and reporting; addressing issues related to security measures and procedures; enhancing partnership working within the local community. These recommendations have local impact and are being used to inform institutional policies and procedures at The University. Project findings are also being implemented into HEFCE’s wider work and national action around these issues. Internationally, the dissemination of these findings is contributing to the limited research in this area

A linked data approach to publishing complex scientific workflows

Past data management practices in many fields of natural science, including climate research, have focused primarily on the final research output - the research publication - with less attention paid to the chain of intermediate data results and their associated metadata, including provenance. Data were often regarded merely as an adjunct to the publication, rather than a scientific resource in their own right. In this paper, we attempt to address the issues of capturing and publishing detailed workflows associated with the climate/research datasets held by the Climatic Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia. To this end, we present a customisable approach to exposing climate research workflows for the effective re-use of the associated data, through the adoption of linked-data principles, existing widely adopted citation techniques (Digital Object Identifier) and data exchange mechanisms (Open Archives Initiative Object Reuse and Exchange)

Two Journals and a Pandemic: Reflections on Being a Data Science Editor-in-Chief

This essay is a collection of reflections from my experiences in the past few years, first as editor-in-chief (EiC) of the Data Science Journal and then launching Patterns as its first EiC during the global COVID-19 pandemic. I discuss what I learned and how I worked with these journals, and I close with some hopes for the next 20 years of data science

Improving public health evaluation: a qualitative investigation of practitioners' needs.

BACKGROUND: In 2011, the House of Lords published a report on Behaviour Change, in which they report that "a lot more could, and should, be done to improve the evaluation of interventions." This study aimed to undertake a needs assessment of what kind of evaluation training and materials would be of most use to UK public health practitioners by conducting interviews with practitioners about everyday evaluation practice and needed guidance and materials. METHODS: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 32 public health practitioners in two UK regions, Cambridgeshire and the South West. Participants included directors of public health, consultants in public health, health improvement advisors, public health intelligence, and public health research officers. A topic guide included questions designed to explore participants existing evaluation practice and their needs for further training and guidance. Data were analysed using thematic analyses. RESULTS: Practitioners highlighted the need for evaluation to defend the effectiveness of existing programs and protect funding provisions. However, practitioners often lacked training in evaluation, and felt unqualified to perform such a task. The majority of practitioners did not use, or were not aware of many existing evaluation guidance documents. They wanted quality-assured, practical guidance that relate to the real world settings in which they operate. Practitioners also mentioned the need for better links and support from academics in public health. CONCLUSION: Whilst numerous guidance documents supporting public health evaluation exist, these documents are currently underused by practitioners - either because they are not considered useful, or because practitioners are not aware of them. Integrating existing guides into a catalogue of guidance documents, and developing a new-quality assured, practical and useful document may support the evaluation of public health programs. This in turn has the potential to identify those programs that are effective; thus improving public health and reducing financial waste