Research data management: ì definitions, drivers and resources Martin Donnelly Digital Curation Centre University of Edinburgh EIFL General Assembly İstanbul, Türkiye – 11 November 2013 Overview I. The Digital Curation Centre II. Definitions i. What is research data management? ii. Data’s role in the research process III. Drivers: why is RDM necessary / desirable? IV. Barriers, and possible roles for libraries V. RDM resources I. The Digital Curation Centre ì The (est. 2004) is… ì A UK centre of expertise in digital preservation, with a particular focus on research data management (RDM) ì Based across three sites: Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Bath ì Working with a number of UK universities to identify gaps in RDM provision and raise capabilities across the sector ì Also involved in a variety of international collaborations… DCC networks and partnerships II. DEFINITIONS What is RD(M)? “the active management and appraisal of data over the lifecycle of scholarly and scientific interest” Data management is a part of good research practice. ii. What do we mean by research data? ì It varies from discipline to discipline, and from funder to funder… ì A science-centric definition: ì “The recorded factual material commonly accepted in the scientific community as necessary to validate research findings.” (US Office of Management and Budget, Circular 110) ì And another from the visual arts: ì “Evidence which is used or created to generate new knowledge and interpretations. ‘Evidence’ may be intersubjective or subjective; physical or emotional; persistent or ephemeral; personal or public; explicit or tacit; and is consciously or unconsciously referenced by the researcher at some point during the course of their research.” (Leigh Garrett, KAPTUR project: see http://kaptur.wordpress.com/ 2013/01/23/what-is-visual-arts-research-data-revisited/) Research data lifecycle Plan Analyze Collect SHARE Integrate DATA Assure …and RE-USE Discover Describe Preserve According to DataONE III. DRIVERS i. Technology ii. Efficiency iii. Expectation iv. Verification v. Protection i. It’s now possible ì Developments in sensor technology, networking and digital storage enable new research and scientific paradigms ì As costs also fall, possibilities for data sharing, citation and re-use become much more widespread ì Journals dedicated solely to publishing data have even started to appear. That’s not to say it’s an entirely new thing: journals have always published data, just never before at such scale… Rosse from Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, (MDCCCLXI) (or 1861 if you’d prefer) Five years of front pages… Nature, 09/08 ACM, 12/08 Nature, 09/09 Economist, 02/10 InformationWeek, 08/10 Science, 02/11 Popular Science, Computerworld, 11/11 11/12 ii. VfM via data re-use / re-purposing Ships' log books build picture of climate change 14 October 2010 You can now help scientists understand the climate of the past and unearth new historical information by revisiting the voyages of First World War Royal Navy warships. Detail from Royal Navy Recruitment poster, RNVR Signals branch, 1917 (Catalogue reference: ADM Visitors to OldWeather.org will be able to 1/8331) retrace the routes taken by any of 280 Royal Endeavour, 1768-71 Navy ships. These include historic vessels such (Captain Cook) as HMS Caroline, the last survivor of the 1916 Battle of Jutland still afloat. By transcribing information about the weather and interesting events from images of each ship's logbook, web volunteers will help scientists build a more accurate picture of how our climate has changed over the last century. HMS Beagle, 1830-34 http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/news/503. htm HMS Torch, 1918 Government pressure/support 6.9 The Research Councils expect the researchers they fund to deposit published articles or conference proceedings in an open access repository at or around the time of publication. But this practice is unevenly enforced. Therefore, as an immediate step, we have asked the Research Councils to ensure the researchers they fund fulfil the current requirements. Additionally, the Research Councils have now agreed to invest £2 million in the development, by 2013, of a UK ‘Gateway to Research’. In the first instance this will allow ready access to Research Council funded research information and related data but it will be designed so that it can also include research funded by others in due course. The Research Councils will work with their partners and users to ensure information is presented in a readily reusable form, using common formats and open standards. http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/innovation/docs/i/11-1387- innovation-and-research-strategy-for-growth.pdf iii. Funder principles/expectations 1. Public good 2. Preservation 3. Discovery 4. Confidentiality 5. First use 6. Recognition 7. Public funding Six of the seven RCUK councils require data management plans (or equivalent), as do Wellcome Trust, Cancer Research UK, and more… EXPECTATIONS 1. Research organisations will promote internal awareness of these principles1. andINTERNAL expectations and ensure AWARENESS that their researchers - of and principles, research students have a general awareness of the regulatory environment and of the available exemptions which may be used, should the need arise, to justify the withholding of research data; expectations, regulatory environment, 2. Published research papers should include a short statement describing how andpossible on what terms exemptions any supporting research data may be accessed. 3. Each research organisation will have specific policies and associated processes to maintain effective internal awareness of their publicly-funded research data holdings and of requests by third parties to access such data; all of their2. researchersACCESS or research STATEMENT students funded - byincluded EPSRC will be requiredwithin to comply with research organisation policies in this area or, in exceptional circumstances,research to provide justification papers of why this is not possible. 4. Publicly-funded research data that is not generated in digital format will be stored in a manner to facilitate it being shared in the event of a valid request for access to the data being received (this expectation could be satisfied by implementing3. POLICIES a policy to AND convert andPROCESSES store such data in - digital covering format in a timely manner); 5. Research organisations will ensure that appropriately structured metadata describingmaintenance the research data and they hold access is published requests (normally within 12 months of the data being generated) and made freely accessible on the internet; in each case the metadata must be sufficient to allow others to understand what research data exists, why, when and how it was generated, and how to access4. it.NON Where -theDIGITAL research data DATA referred -to strategyin the metadata for is a digitalaccess object /it is expected that the metadata will include use of a robust digital object identifier digitisation(For example as available through the DataCite organisation - http://datacite.org). 6. Where access to the data is restricted the published metadata should also5. give METADATAthe reason and summarise PUBLICATION the conditions which - mustwithin be satisfied 12 for access to be granted. For example ‘commercially confidential’ data, in which a business organisation has a legitimate interest, might be made available to others subject to a suitable legally enforceable non-disclosure agreement. months of data generation 7. Research organisations will ensure that EPSRC-funded research data is securely preserved for a minimum of 10-years from the date that any researcher 6. RESTRICTIONS - list these within metadata ‘privileged access’ period expires or, if others have accessed the data, from last date on which access to the data was requested by a third party; all reasonable steps will be taken to ensure that publicly-funded data is not 7.held inPRESERVATION any jurisdiction where the available - 10 years legal safeguards from provide date lower of levels last of protection than are available in the UK 8. Research organisations will ensure that effective data curation is provided throughoutaccess the full data lifecycle, with ‘data curation’ and ‘data lifecycle’ being as defined by the Digital Curation Centre. The full range of responsibilities associated with data curation over the data lifecycle will be clearly allocated within the research organisation, and where research data is subject to restricted8. accessCURATION the research organisation - maintenance will implement and and manage security appropriate security controls; research organisations will particularly ensure that the quality assurance of their data curation processes is a specifically assigned 9. RESOURCING - from existing funding responsibility; 9. Research organisations will ensure adequate resources are provided to supportstreams the curation of publicly-funded research data; these resources will be allocated from within their existing public funding streams, whether received from Research Councils as direct or indirect support for specific projects or from higher education Funding Councils as block grants The worldwide policy environment (i) ì USA: Lots happening. Office of Science and Technology Policy Memorandum on Open Data (February 2013) ì This requires that products from federally-funded research be made publicly available, and that funders have a plan in place to make sure this happens (“Federal agencies investing