Introduction to research data management

Peter Lund, Anton Angelo, Chris Thomson (CEISMIC)

Overview

• What is data?

• Challenges in working with

data

• Advantages of good data

management

• Data management plans

• Practicalities

– Back up and storage

– Ethics

– Sharing data

– Licencing

– Resources

Learning outcomes

• Identify the benefits and drivers for good data management

• Appreciate the common elements of an effective data

management plan and why it is desirable to complete one

• Understand the benefits and challenges of sharing data

• Know how to describe your data

• Reflect on best practice for managing digital data effectively

• Understand what further help is available in managing data

• What kind of data do you

collect?

• What challenges do you

face in collecting data?

• Discuss in groups for 3

minutes

What is data?

Advantages of RDM

Compliance with funders’& institutional policies

Reduces the risk of data loss

Facilitates sharing and reuse of data

Enhances the visibility of your research

Provides opportunities for collaborations

Funder requirements

Include the following matters in the final report to the Society required under

clause 4.2(c):

(i) Which data and sample repositories will be used to store the metadata,

data and samples collected as part of the Programme and

(ii) Where the metadata will be stored if no data or sample repositories are

available

A view from RCUK1. Make data openly available where possible

2. Have policies and plans for research data and preserve data with long-

term value

3. Provide sufficient metadata for discovery and provide information on

access to data in publications

4. Consider legal, ethical and commercial constraints on release of research

data

5. Protect the efforts of research data creators with appropriate embargoes

6. Acknowledge the source of research datasets and abide by the terms

and conditions of use

7. Ensure cost-effective use of public funds for RDM

Credit: Loughborough University

Australia

Research lifecycle

Credit: University of

California: Irvine

What is a data management plan?

• DCC Checklist

“A Data Management Plan is a project document

which describes the data (or similar evidence) that

a project will collect, how it will be stored during

the project, how it will be archived at the end of

the project and how access will be granted to it

where appropriate.”

Some practicalities…

Organise your files

• Directory structure naming conventions

• File naming conventions

File formats for long-term access

• Non-proprietary

• Open, documented standard

• Common usage by research community

• Standard representation (ASCII, Unicode)

• Unencrypted

• Uncompressed

Make it so one thing can’t ruin everything

Pen drives fail Hard disk

stolen with laptop

Hacked email

account

Viruses and Malware

Cloud service issues

Fire

Sunspots

Cosmic rays

Alien attack

The Apocalypse

When Toy Story 2 almost

vanished

<iframe width="560" height="315"

src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/yIz9

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allowfullscreen></iframe>

Rule of three

Removable Storage

• USB Key

• Hard Drive

Laptop or Desktop

• Backed up corporate folder?

Cloud Storage

• One/Google drive

• Email

EthicsAnonymity and confidentiality

• What personal information have you collected?

• What commitments have you made to protect personal data

• The Privacy Act

• What have you said in your ethics application?

• Whose data is it?

Data Sharing

Sharing data and management snafu

in 3 short acts

Meta data

• Data about data

• What elements might

you use to describe

data?

Data citation

• Academic impact is measured by

citation counts

• Your data should be cited by you and

others

Data set citation

• Cool, H. E. M., & Bell, M. (2011). Excavations at St

Peter’s Church, Barton-upon-Humber [Data set].

doi:10.5284/1000389

• DOIs are available from repositories e.g. UC

Research Repository, Figshare

Publishing data• PLOS

• Data journals e.g.-

– Scientific Data

– Geoscience data journal

• Subject repositories e.g. RePec, ArXiv

• Figshare, Dryad

• UC Research Repository

LicensingCopyright Graffiti Sign by Horia Varlan

CC-BY

https://flic.kr/p/7vBD4T

Public Domain

Few Restrictions

Public Domain

Few Restrictions

All Rights Reserved

Few Freedoms

Public Domain

Few Restrictions

Some Rights Reserved

Range of Licence Options

All Rights Reserved

Few Freedoms

Case Study: CEISMIC Canterbury

Earthquakes Digital Archive

Enabling effective data

management and reuse:

• Discoverability

• Ethics

• Licensing

• Technical

Discoverability

- Submit to your IR

- Use unique identifiers or URIs

- Provide metadata – you are the

best source

Ethics

- Identify data of long-term value

- Consent forms should cover:

- Storage & access

- How data can be reused

Licensing

- Use NZ CC licenses for data

- Consider how ethics requirements

affect licensing

Technical

- Use ‘open’ formats, eg CSV

- Consider standards, eg

http://dataprotocols.org/tabular-

data-package/

Why you should manage your data

Compliance with funders’& institutional policies

Reduces the risk of data loss

Facilitates sharing and reuse of data

Enhances the visibility of your research

Provides opportunities for collaborations

Resources

Mantra from Edinburgh University

DMPonlineDigital Curation Centre

ITS support

Virtual machines -Windows (currently Windows 12 server)

Linux (Red Hat Enterprise)

Bandwidth quota per month 20gb

(40gb for international students)

KAREN network from REANNZ

Storage and further resources on request

More help

RDM Subject guide

Anton Angelo

Research Data Coordinator

Liaison Librarians:

Kerry Gilmour

Dave Lane

Janette Nicolle

Cuiying Mu

Departmental IT TechniciansPeter Lund,

Manager, Research Support

Importance of data management

plans

Credit: Mantra –

University of

Edinburgh

Photo creditstaken from Flickr and used with attribution under cc licence

• Slide 1 Janeneka Staaks

• Slide 9 Caroline and Louis Volant

• Slide 10 Global Panorama