Managing Research Data – The Organisational Challenge at Oxford James A J Wilson Friday 6 th December, 2013

The Growing Importance of Research Data Management Rise of data-driven research –Challenge to existing academic practices –Opportunities for new kinds of research Increasing recognition of need to manage research data better –Opportunities for research communities –Concern for reputations –Mandates from research funders

Damaro Objectives Institutional RDM Policy Better understanding of researchers’ requirements Improved training & support materials – embedded in existing delivery channels Design for connected RDM infrastructure, from planning to re-use ‘DataFinder’ software – to act as a catalogue of research data outputs Outputs that can be taken and adapted by other institutions (project was part of the JISC MRD Programme) Sustainability

What is Research Data Management? Planning Literature / data review Data analysis & research outputs Data gathering Documentation Data deposit Discovery Long-term curation Repository storage File organisation & local storage Idea [Funding bid] Access Re-use

Principles behind Oxford’s infrastructure Modular –Different business models for different components –May be extended (or reduced) Researcher-focused –Caters for different disciplines and working practices Intra-institutional –Requires input from multiple support departments and Academic Divisions

Demand

Demand for support with RDM from researchers “My supervisor doesn’t want the whole dataset to be made publicly available as it is. However, he is very keen that whenever research papers based on the data are published, relevant portions of the data that support the findings are also published.” “Having a secure and fairly straightforward means by which to share data with selected collaborators around the world would be extremely useful.” “It would be useful for graduate students to learn to pick the appropriate tool for the appropriate question and the appropriate data … to know what their options are.” Importance of RDM But fewer than a quarter had received any information about RDM from the University

Training Desired Common RDM tasks ranked by mean level of desire for training : 5 = most desired, 1 = least desired

Questions IT staff are asked “How can I backup & archive my data? How can I make my data searchable/mineable? How can I deposit my data into a (well-known) external database How can I be sure that my data is secure and fulfils both legal and grant conditions?” “can vary from generally not knowing where to start and needing guidance on how to structure/store the data to having a complete plan on how a project is to be delivered and having already chosen the technology to achieve this without consultation” “Users only talk about storage capacity” “why is your data store so expensive when I can buy a 1Tb drive for £60?”

Demand for support with RDM from above “Publicly funded research data are a public good, produced in the public interest, which should be made openly available with as few restrictions as possible in a timely and responsible manner.” RCUK Common Principles on Data Policy “data must be accessible and readily located; they must be intelligible to those who wish to scrutinise them; data must be assessable so that judgments can be made about their reliability and the competence of those who created them; and they must be usable by others. For data to meet these requirements it must be supported by explanatory metadata (data about data).” Royal Society – Data as an Open Enterprise

Challenges

Diverse practices Principle of subsidiarity 45% of Departmental IT Managers reported that ‘every researcher / research group is completely free to choose how they manage their research data’ 70% offer some departmental infrastructure to encourage a degree of standard practice (e.g. shared drives, data deposit guidelines) 15% of departments have a departmental policy mandating particular tools and processes that researchers should use for managing their data University RDM policy ratified in 2012, setting out responsibilities of researchers and institution

Disciplinary requirements differ Significant differences in how researchers work Wide range of experience and confidence amongst researchers Some disciplines already have good RDM infrastructure in place, some keen for central support –“The University should have a dedicated central repository” –“[The University should] develop a data management service or be in a position to know what to recommend to our researchers” –“The desire to centralize … may work at the lower end of the data requirements, but at the higher end is rather naïve”

Researchers unclear where to go for support

Lack of staff confidence with RDM issues Not Confident Completely Confident

Solutions

Who should support research data management? Planning Literature / data review Data analysis & research outputs Data gathering Documentation Data deposit Discovery Long-term curation Repository storage File organisation & local storage Idea [Funding bid] Access and re-use Research Services IT Services Library Services Academic Divisions & Departments Oxford eResearch Centre (OeRC) COORDINATION

Role of Libraries Metadata Access Workflows Collection management Collection curation and preservation Service provision Systems But also contributions to training and good practice in earlier parts of research life-cycle

Ongoing work Research services –OxfordDMPOnline & 20 questions for RDM –Involvement of research facilitators IT Services –Implementing services for ‘live’ data (HFS, Servers and VMs, Supercomputing, ORDS) –Research Support Group Libraries –DataBank –DataFinder –Involvement of Subject Librarians University coordination –Research Data Management and Open Data Working Group

Coordination Single point of contact –Central RDM website Associated challenges –Information / data / metadata flows –RT systems –Resourcing –More organisational than technical

Questions?