1. DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data DATUM in Action Supporting researchers to plan and manage their research data www.northumbria.ac.uk/datum www.northumbria.ac.uk/datum Dr Jeremy Ellman Prof Julie McLeod School of Computing, Engineering & Information Sciences JISCMRD Workshop: Meeting challenges in RDM PLanning,23 Mar 2012

2. DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 1 Outline  DATUM in Action & its research project target: MATSIQEL  MATSIQEL data requirements  Infrastructure element: a software solution  Conclusions

3. DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 2 DATUM in Action Helping researchers on an EU FP7 staff exchange project define & implement good RDM practice 1. Training & mentoring DMP (based on DCC & tailored) Action Research Approach 1. Requirements analysis 2. Data management plan 3. Supporting infrastructure InfrastructureSteps 2. Guidance researcher focused; what they wanted; ’how to’ & links to existing NU guidance; usable by other HEIs roles & responsibilities folders, files & version control metadata information security 3. Technology i.shared drive, MS Office ii.SharePoint (collaborative prototype) iii.Bazaar – version control

4. DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 3 MATSIQEL: EU FP7 Research Project  Data management requirements complex as research data is  Confidential  Partially anonymised  Partly proprietary  Multiple versions  both raw data and derived data  Multiple levels of access required/allowed  Required Internationally  EU and non EU

5. DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 4 Data Requirements  Version control  Multiple copies of raw data  Versions of processing software  Multiple versions of processed data  Different research centres  Distribution control  Central shared data space  Authoritative record  Permissions management

6. DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 5 Technology infrastructure BZR: Bazaar  Distributed Version Control System  Multiple repositories  Multiple branches  Local check-in check-out  Multiple platform  Windows, Mac, Linux  Huge range of tools  bazaar-explorer cross platform GUI

7. DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 6 VCS Vs DVCS  Source: Auvray 2008 “Distributed Version Control Systems: A Not-So-Quick Guide”

8. DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 7 Bazaar Demo  http://youtu.be/yqV1VOqwy1c http://youtu.be/yqV1VOqwy1c  The video describes how the open source version control software Bazaar could be used by researchers to manage research data from any discipline.

9. DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 8 Core Commands  "bzr init" initializes Bazaar management for the current directory.  "bzr add" makes all unknown files in the current directory known to Bazaar.  "bzr status" generates a report of the current state of the local branch.  "bzr commit -m "[commit-message]"" creates a commit  "bzr mv [versioned-file] [new-location]" moves the [versioned-file]  "bzr remove [file]" removes the specified file or files  "bzr log" generates a log of every commit in sequence  "bzr help [command]" the Bazaar help command provides embedded  "bzr merge [location]" instructs Bazaar to merge changes  "bzr pull" performs a fast-forward update of the local working  "bzr update" merges the contents of the remote branch into the local branch  "bzr push" performs the equivalent of a "bzr update" on the remote mirror  "bzr uncommit" "rewinds" the branch to the last commit  "bzr revert [file]" takes the specified file and reverts the contents of that

10. DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data 9 Conclusions  Research data needs to be controlled  Version control, protection and distribution are common requirements  Distributed version control software is freely available  BZR Repositories can be archived in SharePoint

11. DATUM in Action – Healthy research needs healthy data Project funded by JISC Copyright holder: Northumbria University, School of Computing, Engineering & Information Sciences, 2011 Materials made freely available under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 UK: England & Wales license DATUM in Action www.northumbria.ac.uk/datum