Category Archives: Research Data Management

New online training resource for social scientists

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The new CESSDA Expert tour guide on Data Management has been put together by a group of experts in research data management from across Europe who make up CESSDA – the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives. This consortium includes 11 European social science data archives, including the UK Data Service.

This fantastic new resource aims to help social science researchers to make their data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). The guided tour takes you through 6 areas on a journey through the different stages of your project:

  1. Plan
  2. Organise and document
  3. Process
  4. Store
  5. Protect
  6. Archive and publish

As well as numerous examples and expert tips, the tour also includes specific information on data management practices in different European countries.

Curious to take the tour? Visit the online guide at cessda.eu/DMGuide

Training opportunity: Making your research data open

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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.

Focus on RDM tools: ORDO

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The OU offers a range of tools and services which are designed to help researchers plan, manage, work with and share their research data. In these blogposts I’m going to focus on a few of these tools and services, including how to access and use them and how they can make your life easier.

This week: Open Research Data Online (ORDO)

Open Research Data Online (ORDO) is The Open University’s research data repository. Based on the Figshare platform, ORDO can be used for the storage of live research data, but is particularly useful for archiving and publishing research data once a project is completed. Data stored in ORDO will be kept for a minimum of ten years after project completion; published data will be given a DataCite digital object identifier (DOI), providing a permanent, citable web link to help you get recognition for your work.

We launched ORDO just over a year ago, and since then OU researchers have uploaded a range of different data types, from videos to tabular data to code to literature lists. ORDO accepts most file types and can visualize the majority of them in the browser. If you come across a file type which is not accepted, please let us know.

Datasets can be grouped into collections or projects and everything you upload to ORDO will be assigned a DOI  (Digital Object Identifier) to make it really easy to cite in your papers. One of our users told us:

“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.”

You can make data publicly available, confidential or embargoed and we encourage everyone who uploads their data to ORDO to employ a licence in order to clarify the conditions for re-use.

All OU research staff and students can use ORDO, login is via your OUCU, the first time you visit, simply click on the log in button in the top right-hand corner. For more guidance on using ORDO visit the ORDO pages on the Library Research Support website.

Many research funders and publishers are now requiring researchers to make the data underpinning publications available, and this is a secure, easy way to fulfill this requirement. All data submitted to ORDO will be checked and approved by specialist Library staff before being made public.

If you’re interested in using ORDO but aren’t sure where to start, email the Library Research Support team for advice.

Focus on RDM tools: data storage options

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The OU offers a range of tools and services which are designed to help researchers plan, manage, work with and share their research data. In these blogposts I’m going to focus on a few of these tools and services, including how to access and use them and how they can make your life easier.

This week: IT options for storing data during research projects

Storage option?

One of the questions we are most frequently asked is around where project teams should store data during the lifetime of the project. The OU provides a number of facilities for storing data, however please remember that each project is individual so there is no one-size-fits-all solution for everyone and when starting out you’ll need to think carefully about which one works best for you. When considering where to store data, you should consider a number of factors, including but not limited to:

  • How much data do you have?
  • What file types will you be working with?
  • Are the data sensitive?
  • Who needs access? OU staff only? Researchers at other institutions? In the UK? Abroad?
  • How big is your team? What project management functions do you need?
  • Where do you need to access the data? At your desk? In the field?
  • What experience do your team have of using the chosen storage solution? Is any training needed/available?

Research your options

In order to help you to decide which data storage option works best for your project together with our colleagues in IT we have put together a matrix of some of the options  (ORDO, One Drive, OU networked file storage, SharePoint, cloud based services) available to OU researchers, weighing up the pros and cons of each one.

If you’d like more advice about where to store your data, or strategies for managing your data within your chosen system, please get in touch.

NB. Researchers within the STEM faculty have access to specialist IT support (internal link) which they should use in preference to centrally supported storage options outlined in the comparison table linked to above.

New Wellcome Trust policy for research outputs

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Last week, the Wellcome Trust announced an update to their policy on managing and sharing research data, which is now a Policy on data, software and materials management and sharing.

Researchers applying to Wellcome in future will be required to prepare to share other outputs of their work, such as original software and research materials like antibodies, cell lines or reagents.

As David Carr, from Wellcome’s Open Research team, writes in their announcement:

 “As a global research foundation, we’re dedicated to ensuring that the outputs of the research we fund – including publications, data, code and materials – can be accessed and used in ways that will maximise the resulting health benefits. 

Making outputs available can spark new lines of discovery and innovation, and helps to ensure that findings can be verified and reproduced.”

Once the new policy is put in to place, applicants for Wellcome funding will have to complete a broader outputs management plan (rather than a data management plan) to address how other research outputs will be managed and shared.

The requirement for the new outputs management plans will be added to application forms over the next year. Guidance already exists on which kinds of work will require one:

Examples of applications that require an outputs management plan

Wellcome have long been champions of ‘open’, being one of the first to require those they fund to make their publications and data openly available, and this update reflects a move towards an Open Research approach, something they have been developing with their Open Research Pilot Project and Open Research publishing platform.

Would it be a surprise if other funders followed suit in expanding their requirements to explicitly consider other research outputs?

Questions about the policy can be put to the Wellcome Policy Team or feel free to get in touch with the us in the Library Research Support team, now or when you are writing your outputs management plan.

Focus on RDM tools: DMPOnline

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The OU offers a range of tools and services which are designed to help researchers plan, manage, work with and share their research data. Over the coming weeks I’m going to focus on a few of these tools and services in these blogposts, including how to access and use them and how they can make your life easier.

This week: DMPOnline

Data Management Plans (DMPs) are often requested by funding bodies when applying for grants, and the University expects all research staff and students working on a project which collects, creates or uses data to have written a DMP, regardless of funder requirements (check out the OU’s Research Data Management Policy). This can be a daunting task, particularly if you’ve never written one before, but using DMPOnline can help you to structure your plan and to easily find the information and guidance you need to answer the questions.

DMPOnline is developed by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC), but has been customised by the OU especially for OU research staff and students. For guidance on how to create an account on DMPOnline, watch this short video.

DMPOnline offers a range of templates for different funders and an institutional template (which is recommended when your research is not funded by an external body, or if your funder doesn’t require a DMP). Each template has guidance associated with the individual questions, written by the DCC, the OU and the funder (if applicable). You can choose to turn the DCC guidance on or off; we recommend that you keep it on because there are lots of useful hints and tips in there.

Once you’ve written your plan you can either share it (with collaborators or with the Library for review) or export it into a range of file types. One of the neat things about the tool is that it will never let you go over the page limit specified by any given funder, so you know that the format you export the plan in will always be compliant.

Why not go and check DMPOnline out for yourself? If you need any help using it, would like us to review your DMP or if you’ve used the tool and would like to give us some feedback about it, send us an email.

 

ORDO on tour… on your desktop again!

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ORDO online drop-in: Monday 3rd July 14:00-14:30

ORDO screenshot

As part of our ORDO on Tour series of events, we have arranged another online drop-in session at 14:00 on Monday 3rd July for any research staff or students who would like to find out more about the system.

ORDO is the OU’s data repository, provided by Figshare. In this session, Megan from Figshare and Dan from the OU will demo the system, including how to upload items, using project spaces for collaborating work, and curating data into collections or branded groups. There will be time for questions at the end, so feel free to bring examples of your own data and explore the opportunities around storing and/or sharing your research outputs!

If you would like to attend, but this time doesn’t work for you, please let us know as we may consider running future online drop-ins should this prove popular.

Instructions for joining
There is no need to sign up ahead of time; at 14:00 on 3rd July simply:

Add to your calendar

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Getting to grips with Research Data Management

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Yesterday I held a workshop for research staff and students on Research Data Management. As always this was an excellent opportunity for researchers to share their own experiences of data management and exchange tips (and grievances!). In particular there was lots of interesting discussion around the ethical implications of data sharing, which I will be taking forward to help evaluate the advice that we give researchers regarding managing and sharing sensitive, confidential and personal data.

This session was oversubscribed, so if you would have liked to attend but were unable look out for more RDM workshops on the Research Career Development programme next year; or if you are a research group we may be able to set up a bespoke training session with for you – please get in touch.

ORDO on tour… on your desktop!

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ORDO online drop-in: Tuesday 23rd May 14.30-15.00

As part of our ORDO on Tour series of events, we have arranged an online drop-in session at 14.30 on Tuesday 23rd May for any research staff or students who would like to find out more about the system.

ORDO is the OU’s data repository, provided by Figshare. In this session, Megan from Figshare and Dan from the OU will demo the system, including how to upload items, using project spaces for collaborating work, and curating data into collections or branded groups. There will be time for questions at the end, so feel free to bring examples of your own data and explore the opportunities around storing and/or sharing your research outputs!

If you would like to attend, but this time doesn’t work for you, please let us know as we may consider running future online drop-ins should this prove popular.

Instructions for joining
There is no need to sign up  ahead of time; at 14.30 on 23rd May simply:

Add this event to your calendar:
iCalendar  •  Google Calendar  •  Outlook  •  Outlook Online  •  Yahoo! Calendar

The Law on TDM in Europe: an introduction – Free Webinar

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UKSG are offering a free webinar on The Law of Text and Data Mining in Europe.

“The aim of the webinar is to introduce the audience, in particular non-lawyers, to the legal framework of text and data mining, focusing on the main aspects of the law at the European level.”  Speakers are Guilia Dore and Nancy Pontika.

The webinar is on Tuesday 21st March and registration also provides access to the recording of the session.