Category Archives: ORDO

Data Conversation – talking with researchers about open data

A couple of weeks ago we held an informal event for researchers to share their experiences and knowledge of working with research data.

The idea was to hear from researchers about how they work and what’s important to them, away from the (valuable but not always so exciting) talk about complying with funder policies and writing data management plans. We hoped this would start some conversations and potentially help build a community around research data management at the OU.

If that sounds familiar it could be because it’s something Lancaster University have been doing very successfully for a while. The suggestion to plan a similar event at the OU came from talking with our friends at Figshare (the repository our research data repository, ORDO, uses), in particular Megan, who also gave us lots of help before and during the event. So, with thanks, we pinched Lancaster’s idea and even the name ‘Data Conversation’.

We had a theme of ‘open data’ and invited OU researchers to come along to talk on that topic for about 15 minutes – and were delighted to have a brilliant line-up of talks.

Our speakers

David King – a Visiting Fellow in Computing & Communications, David talked about the history of his work with biodiversity and agriculture data, and the many systems he has used to manage and share information. We heard how technologies and tools like DOIs, institutional repositories (hello ORO and ORDO!), and collaborative document management like Office365 can help to work with and share research data. David also touched upon his joint research in the Humanities with Francesca Benatti on the A Question of Style project. You can see David and Francesca’s slides here.

Sarah Middle – Sarah’s a PhD student studying Digital Humanities/Classical Studies, and talked about her PhD in using linked data in Ancient World research. Through examples of Sarah’s work linking UK Arts and Humanities project data, and working with the British Library on Privy Council appeals data, we saw how openly available data can be re-used. However, re-using that data can require a lot of work to make it usable in a new format, and to be sure if, and how, it can be shared further. Sarah also took us through the process she has gone through to ensure the data she collects from surveys and interviews can be as open as possible, by working with the OU’s ethics committee and library research support.

Nancy Pontika – Nancy is Open Access Aggregation Officer at CORE, (the Open Access repository based in the OU’s Knowledge Media Institute), and told us about the work CORE does to provide research publications to anyone, anywhere, by harvesting content from open access repositories. CORE has over 135 million metadata records and 11 million full text items and makes its API and dataset open for others to use freely. We also heard about the development of the upcoming analytics dashboard, for institutions to assess the impact of their research outputs. You can see Nancy’s slides here.

Tony Hirst – A Senior Lecturer in Telematics, Tony gave us a whirlwind tour of the many ways he has used open data to answer topical questions, or really to investigate anything that he finds of interest (including the companies connected to Iron Maiden). It was a great demonstration of how an inquisitive and playful approach can produce novel information by combining freely available datasets. You can find many examples of Tony’s work in these links, and generally on his blog OUseful.Info. Tony had delivered an earlier session for the library team here at the OU, about how virtual machines and Jupyter notebooks can be used in teaching and research data sharing, which really piqued our interest too.

Discussion

Along to hear the talks and join the discussion were a mix of researchers, research support staff and librarians. After the talks and follow up discussion we had some round table discussions on ‘open data’ topics:

  • What most interests you about sharing your data openly?
  • What might prevent you from sharing your data?
  • Where might you go (or have you gone) for support on sharing your data?
  • Where might you look to deposit your data, and why?

These images show the ideas we captured (click on them to see in detail):

From all of this some themes emerged:

  • Making data ‘open’ can be a tricky thing to do. Echoing what we often find when working with researchers – that working out where to put it, how to organise and describe it, and whether it is indeed ok to share it (e.g. for personal or otherwise sensitive data) takes time and effort. Then actually doing it takes time too.
  • There are lots of resources and people to go to for support and advice. This is great and shows a commitment from funders, institutions and, most importantly, researchers to work openly. Is there a risk that that it can be hard to pick your way through to the relevant information you need? Possibly.
  • Is it intrinsic or something extra? For some, data sharing is part of their work (See our speakers for example). For others it is seen as an extra task to do at the end of a project or when publishing.
  • There doesn’t have to be one ‘right way’. In the talks we heard positive examples of data being shared and used in a variety of ways. Things like ORCID, DOIs and metadata standards can help identify and link data consistently, but beyond that we don’t all have to use the same methods and systems.
  • It is well worth doing. We were to an extent preaching to the choir, but the mood in the room was that it is certainly well worth doing. Our speakers illustrated a variety of uses and approaches where open data enables and supports research, and the comments we noted for ‘What most interests you about sharing your data openly?’ highlighted benefits for data authors, data re-users, research participants and for generally improving research.

How can we help?

So what can we, as a library, do?

  • We can continue to provide the tools and systems to store, preserve and share research data.
  • We can support researchers in using them – and when they do, we can help promote and connect the data and other outputs they share.
  • We can continue to provide advocacy, training and advice on data sharing to make researchers aware and prepared to share when planning their work.
  • We can also continue to listen and have conversations with researchers about what they are doing, their priorities, and what would help them to do it.

Next Steps?

We’d love to have another Data Conversation in the new year on a new topic. If you’d like to take part – either to speak about your work or join to hear what others have been up to – please get in touch library-research-support@open.ac.uk

And thanks again to everyone who came along!

Written by Dan Crane, Research Support Librarian.

Training offer: Making your research data open

There are spaces available on our training session ‘Making your research data open‘ on Tuesday (27th November 2018), 10:00 to 11:30.

Photo by Finn Hackshaw on Unsplash

In this session we will look at why, how, what and when to share data:

  • Why should you share your data? We’ll discuss the benefits and the reasons why data sharing is such a hot topic at the moment.
  • How can you do it? We’ll take a look at the OU’s data repository, ORDO, and provide guidance on preparing data for sharing, including sensitive data
  • What should you share? Do you need to share everything? What do funders and publishers want you to share?
  • When should you share? We’ll the look at the stages of the research process when sharing data is most useful to you and others.

Sign up via My Learning Centre – any if you have any questions, get in touch at library-research-support@open.ac.uk.

ORDO online drop-in

Our monthly online drop-in session for ORDO is tomorrow, Tuesday 4th September, 11:30 – 12:30.

Ask Dan about using our research data repository, ORDO, for data preservation, data sharing, showcasing your work, collaborative projects… and anything else.

To join, go to our Adobe Connect “Research Support” page and click on “join room” (and if you find the link takes you to the “DISS Home” page instead, click on “Resources” at the top and scroll down to “Research Support”).

ORDO online drop-in tomorrow

Our monthly online drop-in session for ORDO is tomorrow, Tuesday 7th August, 11:30 – 12:30.

Ask Dan about using our research data repository, ORDO, for data preservation, data sharing, showcasing your work, collaborative projects… and anything else.

To join, go to our Adobe Connect “Research Support” page and click on “join room” (and if you find the link takes you to the “DISS Home” page instead, click on “Resources” at the top and scroll down to “Research Support”).

ORDO online drop-in today

Our monthly online drop-in session for ORDO is today, 11:30 – 12:30.

Ask Dan about using ORDO for data preservation, data sharing, showcasing your work, collaborative projects… and anything else.

To join, go to our Adobe Connect “Research Support” page and click on “join room” (and if you find the link takes you to the “DISS Home” page instead, click on “Resources” at the top and scroll down to “Research Support”).

ORDO online drop-ins – ask us about the OU’s research data repository

Heard of ORDO already but not sure what it does?

Never heard of it before but interested in options for storing and sharing data to support your research?

I’ll be holding an online drop-in session for ORDO, the OU’s research data repository, on the first Tuesday of every month at 10:30 to answer any questions you have about data preservation, data sharing, showcasing your work, collaborative projects… and anything else.

 

The first session is on Tuesday 5th June, and then at the same time on the first Tuesday of every month after that. Drop-in at any time and stay as long as you want.

To join, go to our Adobe Connect “Research Support” page and click on “join room” (and if you find the link takes you to the “DISS Home” page instead, click on “Resources” at the top and scroll down to “Research Support”).

If you want to get started right away, see the ORDO information on our website or get in touch at library-research-support@open.ac.uk

Training Offer: Making your research data open

There are still spaces available on our training session ‘Making your research data open‘ on Monday 21st May 2018, 14:00 to 15:30.

Image by Jorgen Stamp (CC-BY) at https://digitalbevaring.dk/

In this session we will look at the hows, whats and whys of data sharing:

  • How can you share your data? We’ll take a look at the OU’s data repository, ORDO and provide guidance on preparing data for sharing, including sensitive data
  • What data should you share? Do you need to share everything? What do funders and publishers want you to share?
  • Why should you share your data? We’ll discuss the benefits and the reasons why data sharing is such a hot topic at the moment.

Sign up via My Learning Centre – any if you have any questions, get in touch at library-research-support@open.ac.uk.

Online drop-in – find out about ORDO, the OU’s research data repository

ORDO (Open Research Data Online) is the OU’s research data repository, where OU research staff and students can upload their data, for:

  • secure long-term storage
  • sharing with others, by creating a metadata record describing it and, where appropriate, making the data itself accessible.

You can use it to publish data supporting a publication, or to archive at the end of a project.

“ORDO has proved incredibly useful for hosting sound clips generated by acoustic simulations and experiments, enabling us to provide a link to those clips within conference papers and journal publications” (Professor David Sharp)

We’ll be having an online drop-in next week on Tuesday 27TH March at 11:00-12:00, where we’ll show you how it works and be on hand to answer any questions you have. Feel free to join us at any time during the hour.

To join the session, go to our Adobe Connect online room page and click on “join room”.

If that time doesn’t work for you, or if you want to get started, you can find ORDO at ou.figshare.com and log in with your OU credentials.

For more information, see the ORDO information on our website or get in touch at library-research-support@open.ac.uk

 

Training opportunity: Making your research data open

Image by Jorgen Stamp (CC-BY) at https://digitalbevaring.dk/

Making your data open, Friday 8th December 10-11.30, Research Meeting Room (Library 2nd floor)

There are still spaces available on next week’s training session Making your Data Open. In this session we will look at the hows, whats and whys of data sharing:

  • How can you share your data? We’ll take a look at the OU’s new data repository, ORDO and provide guidance on preparing data for sharing, including sensitive data
  • What data should you share? Do you really need to share everything? What do funders and publishers want you to share?
  • Why should you share your data? We’ll discuss the reasons why data sharing is such a hot topic at the moment and why it’s a good thing to be at the forefront of the data sharing movement.

If you’d like to come along, please sign up on My Learning Centre or email library-training@open.ac.uk.