Research Data Management Blog

Save the Date: Open Science and UCL

Monday 25 June 2018: 09.30-16.00, Senate House

This one day workshop will explore the facets of Open Science and how these are/could be pursued by UCL researcher. In the morning speakers will discuss different aspects of and perspectives on Open Science with afternoon workshops offering practical advice. There will also be opportunity to discuss the steps UCL should take to support Open Science. This free event will be open to all UCL staff and is delivered by UCL Library Services with support from UCL Organisational Development.

More details and registration to follow. Please contact lib-researchsupport@ucl.ac.uk with any questions.

In 2017 we conducted a series of short interviews as part of the LEARN project. We asked several UCL researchers about data management and data sharing in their disciplines.

Dr Martin Zaltz Austwick is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (Bartlett). Martin’s research and teaching makes extensive use of a wide variety of data sources including government data, business data and textual data.

Our interview with Martin provides a clear example of how researchers are already making extensive use of open data and have a desire to share their own data with broad audiences. The interview also emphasized some of the challenges faced by researchers who want to make their data available as a services through interactive websites or APIs. A particular challenge is that whilst funders cover some of the costs associated with Research Data Management usually these don’t include funding after projects have finished to maintain ‘live’ data services. Supporting researchers in their efforts to present data in new and innovative ways is an area university support services may want to continue investigating.

Watch Martin’s 5-minute interview (opens a new window in Youtube).

In 2017 we conducted a series of short interviews as part of the LEARN project. We asked several UCL researchers about data management and data sharing in their disciplines.

Dr Jenny Bunn is a lecturer in UCL Department of Information Studies; she is the Program Director for the MA/Diplomate/Certificate in Archive and Records Management. She previously worked as an archivist at the V&A Museum, The Royal Bank of Scotland Archives, Glasgow University Archives and The National Archives before moving to teaching and research at UCL.

Alongside Jenny’s insights as a researcher, her professional experience as an archivist also informs her approach to Research Data Management (RDM). She emphasised the importance for researchers to reflect on three questions: what data could potentially be useful for other researchers; where to share this data most effectively; and whether some data should not be kept. A central message of the interview was the need for researchers not to view RDM as ‘keeping everything’ but instead as viewing RDM as a key component of research integrity.

Watch Jenny’s 7-minute interview (opens a new window in Youtube).

In 2017 we conducted a series of short interviews as part of the LEARN project. We asked several UCL researchers about data management and data sharing in their disciplines.

Dr Josep Grau-Bove is a Lecturer in Science and Engineering in Arts, Heritage and Archaeology; he works at the Institute for Sustainable Heritage (Bartlett School Environment, Energy & Resources). He is the Assistant Director of one of the Institute’s Programmes for MRes students.

In our interview he reflects on the benefits of Data Management Plans for research students, the technical challenges of managing data and the importance of data sharing within his Institute. He also highlights the need to raise students’ awareness of good practices in data management.

Watch Josep’s 4-minute interview (opens a new window in Youtube).

To celebrate the 3rd international Love Data Week, several Research Data Management teams from London universities have joined forces. More than 15 free events are taking place across Bloomsbury from Monday 12th to Friday 16th of February.

Most events are open to all UCL research staff and research students; here is an overview:

• Get Ready for GDPR: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, 1pm
• What’s my Research Data?: Monday, 2pm
• UCL Research IT & Data Management drop-in: Tuesday, 10am
• Get Your Data In Shape (Organizing and Documenting): Tuesday, 2pm
• Working With Audio Visual Data: Wednesday, 11am
• Consumer Data Research Centre drop-in: Wednesday, 11am-2pm
• Working With Personal Data: Wednesday, 2pm
• Making the Most of Your Research Data: Thursday, 11am
• UCL Introduction to Digital Scholarship and Open Research: Thursday, 1.30pm
• Data Management Planning: Thursday, 3pm
• Introduction to UK Data Service: Friday, 2-3.3opm

A full listing of events is available to share.

For any UCL-specific questions, please contact the UCL Research Data Support officers at lib-researchsupport@ucl.ac.uk.

Two upcoming events organised by Open Research London exploring open science/research are open for booking:

The first event is taking place on the 21st of November and is a satellite event of the OpenCon 2017 conference. During the day there will be a ‘hackathon’ focusing on the themes of ‘Open for reproducibility’ and ‘Open for collaborative-coding’. You can find more information and book here. In the evening of the 21st, there will be a number of talks on open access and open science. Further information and booking here.

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The FAIR data principles aim to provide a framework to ensure that research data can be effectively reused. The principles are outlined below alongside recommendations for practically achieving these principles.

Why FAIR data? 

The FAIR Data Principles were developed by a FORCE11 group and originally published in Nature Scientific Data in 2016. The authors argue that ‘Good data management is not a goal in itself, but rather is the key conduit leading to knowledge discovery and innovation, and to subsequent data and knowledge integration and reuse by the community after the data publication process.’

What are the fair data principles?

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The Wellcome has recently announced an updated policy on sharing research outputs. This policy develops their existing policies on Open Access publishing and research data to emphasise the importance of sharing research software and other research outputs.  This forms part of the Wellcome’s broader promotion of Open Research practices.

You can find the announcement of the Wellcome’s new policy on their website. If you need support with writing an ‘Outputs Management Plan’ for the Wellcome or another funders further guidance is available.

UCL Early Career Researchers, academics and research support staff are invited to attend this free event at the University of Oxford. They will learn and discuss the challenges, methods, laws, and possibilities in collecting and sharing research data in international contexts.

With the SES consortium we have put together an exciting programme of presentations and discussions with both academic and research support perspectives on using research data across continents.

Participants will hear from international research projects in health, law, environment, criminology and more. They will also have the opportunity to ask their questions to our panel of experts at the end of the day.

Read the programme and register now.

You can now watch the speakers’ presentations and download their slides.

The next Data Dialogue event will take place on Thursday 29th of September at the University of Oxford and will focus on research data sharing in an international context. We are looking for UCL Early Career Researchers to give short presentations on their experience of using and sharing data across borders.

The event is aimed at researchers in Science and Engineering in particular but will also interest other researchers. See more information on the event and keynote speakers. The deadline to send us an abstract (max. 300 words) is the 17th of August.

Registration to attend the event is also open.