Guest post by Dr Christiana McMahon,  Research Data Support Officer

In June 2019, the Research Data Management team from Library Services and the Research Data Group from the Centre for Advanced Research Computing embarked on an exciting journey: the launch of the UCL Research Data Repository. As we approach our fifth anniversary, we find ourselves reflecting on the progress we’ve made, what we’ve achieved and what could be improved. To better understand the impact and gather insights from our UCL community, we invite you to complete this survey here. Join us in celebrating this important milestone!

Since its inception, the Research Data Repository has been a pivotal tool for openness and accessibility, offering UCL staff and research students a platform to archive, publish, and share their research outputs as widely and openly as possible. From datasets to figures, presentations to software, the repository has become a hub of scholarly exchange and collaboration. The journey thus far has been marked by significant milestones. Since 2019, we’ve seen over 385,000 downloads and 610,000 views, underscoring the repository’s impact and reach within the academic community.

Figure 1 Graph to show total number of items published using the Research Data Repository

The Research Data Repository enables users to:

• archive and preserve research outputs on a longer-term basis at UCL;
• facilitate the discovery and sharing of work by publishing metadata records;
• assign a digital object identifier (DOI) to permanently link to and identify a record in the online catalogue as part of a full data citation enabling others to reference published works;
• comply with the UCL Research Data policy and other applicable research policies.

Three highlights from the Research Data Repository:

The most viewed record is: Silvester, Christopher; Hillson, Simon (2019). Photographs used for Structure from Motion 3D Dental model generation Part 2. University College London. Figure. https://doi.org/10.5522/04/9939419

The most downloaded record is: Acton, Sophie; Kriston-Vizi, Janos; Singh, Tanya; Martinez, Victor (2019). RNA seq – PDPN/CLEC-2 transcription in FRCs. University College London. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.5522/04/9976112.v1

The most cited record is: Manescu, Petru; Shaw, Mike; Elmi, Muna; Zajiczek, Lydia; Claveau, Remy; Pawar, Vijay; et al. (2020). Giemsa Stained Thick Blood Films for Clinical Microscopy Malaria Diagnosis with Deep Neural Networks Dataset.. University College London. Dataset. https://doi.org/10.5522/04/12173568.v1

These milestones demonstrate the repository’s impact and reach within the academic community, serving as a testament to the collaborative efforts of our dedicated researchers and staff.

Figure 2: Stages of Research Data Lifecycle

Why is the Research Data Repository essential to supporting academic communities across UCL?

It mostly stems from wanting researchers to manage and share their outputs in line with the FAIR principles (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable)  and embrace open science and scholarship practices. Essentially, by depositing outputs into the Research Data Repository and creating associated metadata records, other researchers and members of the public are better placed to find, understand, combine, and reuse the outputs of our research without major technical barriers. In turn, this can help to enhance transparency of the research process, promote enhanced research integrity, and ultimately maximise the value of research findings.

Going forward:

To continue building and developing the service, we are asking staff and research students to tell us what they think. What works well? What could be improved? Which functionalities would you like to see added or enhanced?

The survey closes on Friday, March 22nd, so get in touch and tell us what you think!

Survey link: https://forms.microsoft.com/e/U20yJPAi0W

More information about the Research Data Repository can be found in Open Science & Research Support dedicated webpage.

Any questions or queries about the Research Data Repository can be sent to: researchdatarepository@ucl.ac.uk.

General research data management queries can be sent to: lib-researchsupport@ucl.ac.uk.

Any questions or queries about open science can be directed to: openscience@ucl.ac.uk.

Get involved!

The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!

Guest post by Iona Preston, Research Data Support Officer, in celebration of International Love Data Week 2024.

Photo by Todd Quackenbush on Unsplash.

While there are a lot of general resources to support good research data management practices – for example UCL’s Research Data Management webpages – you might sometimes be looking for something a bit more specific. It’s good practice to store your data in a research data repository that is subject specific, where other people in your research discipline are most likely to search for data. However, you might not know where to begin your search. You could be looking for discipline-specific metadata standards, so your data is more easily reusable by academic colleagues in your subject area. This is where subject-specific research data management resources become valuable. Here are some resources for specific subject areas and disciplines that you might find useful: 

• The Research Data Management Toolkit for Life Sciences
  This resource guides you through the entire process of managing research data, explaining which tools to use at each stage of the research data lifecycle. It includes sections on specific life science research areas, from plant sciences to rare disease data. These sections also cover research community-specific repositories and examples of metadata standards. 
• Visual arts data skills for researchers: Toolkits
  This consists of two different tutorials covering an introduction to research data management in the visual arts and how to create an appropriate data management plan. 
• Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives
  CESSDA brings together data archives from across Europe in a searchable catalogue. Their website includes various resources for social scientists to learn more about data management and sharing, along with an extensive training section and a Data Management Expert Guide to lead you through the data management process. 
• Research Data Alliance for Disciplines (various subject areas)
  The Research Data Alliance is an international initiative to promote data sharing. They have a webpage with special interest groups in various academic research areas, including agriculture, biomedical sciences, chemistry, digital humanities, social science, and librarianship, with useful resource lists for each discipline. 
• RDA Metadata Standards Catalogue (all subject areas)
  This directory helps you find a suitable metadata scheme to describe your data, organized by subject area, featuring specific schemes across a wide range of academic disciplines. 
• Re3Data (all subject areas)
  When it comes to sharing data, we always recommend you check if there’s a subject specific repository first, as that’s the best place to share. If you don’t know where to start finding one, this is a great place to look with a convenient browse feature to explore available options within your discipline.

These are only some of the different discipline specific tools that are available. You can find more for your discipline on the Research Data Management webpages. If you need any help and advice on finding data management resources, please get in touch with the Research Data Management team on lib-researchsupport@ucl.ac.uk.  

Get involved!

The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!

Guest post by Dr Christiana McMahon, Research Data Support Officer, in celebration of International Love Data Week 2024.

From that spark of an idea through to publishing research findings, the Research Data Management team have once again been on-hand to support staff and students.

What’s been happening?

A new version of the Research Data Repository is now available simplifying the process of archiving and preserving research outputs here at UCL for the longer-term.

In 2023 we published 200 items 151 of which were datasets.

Graph to show items published in the UCL Research Repository in 2023.

Over the past year…

• The most downloaded record was: Griffiths, David; Boehm, Jan (2019). SynthCity Dataset – Area 1. University College London. Dataset.
• The most viewed record was: Heenan, Thomas; Jnawali, Anmol; Kok, Matt; Tranter, Thomas; Tan, Chun; Dimitrijevic, Alexander; et al. (2020). Lithium-ion Battery INR18650 MJ1 Data: 400 Electrochemical Cycles (EIL-015). University College London. Dataset.
• The most cited record was: Manescu, Petru; Shaw, Mike; Elmi, Muna; Zajiczek, Lydia; Claveau, Remy; Pawar, Vijay; et al. (2020). Giemsa Stained Thick Blood Films for Clinical Microscopy Malaria Diagnosis with Deep Neural Networks Dataset. University College London. Dataset.

More information is available about the UCL Research Data Repository.  Alternatively, check our FAQs.

Data Management Plan Reviews

The RDM team can review data management plans providing researchers with feedback in-line with UCL’s expectations and funding agency requirements where these apply. In 2023, we reviewed 32 data management plans covering over 10 different funding agencies. More information is available in our website.

Mini-tutorial: Research data lifecycle

The RDM team often refer to the research data lifecycle, but what is it? Essentially, these are the different stages of the research process from planning and preparation through to archiving your research outputs, making them discoverable to the wider research community and members of the public.

The four stages:

1: Get ready – You’ve had an idea for a research study so it’s time to start making plans and getting prepared. Have you considered writing a data management plan?

• Remember, if you are in receipt of external funding, there may be data management requirements to consider.
• Feel free to reach out to Open Science and Research Support to assist you.

2: Let’s go – You are now actively researching putting all those research plans into action.

• Don’t forget to revisit your data management plan and update it to reflect your latest decision making.
• It’s also useful to consider documenting your research as you progress.

3: Ta-dah – The research is complete and it’s time to archive your research outputs to preserve them for the longer-term.

• Aim to utilise subject-specific archives and repositories where possible.
• Creating a metadata record in a public facing online catalogue with links to any related publications can be useful to building online networks of linked research outputs.
• Consider making your research outputs as openly accessible as possible remembering that controlling or restricting access is fine as long as it is justified and there is a set data access protocol in place to facilitate a data access request.
• Did you know you can archive most research outputs in the UCL Research Data Repository?

4: Wow! I think I can use this – making your research discoverable to others for potential reuse can help to maximise research opportunities

• Consider having an agreement in place between parties before sharing research outputs – issues like copyright, IP, commercialisation of (subsequent) work may be discussed here.
• For secondary researchers, time to head back to the start to begin the research process.

And so the research data lifecycle begins again!

Get involved!

The UCL Office for Open Science and Scholarship invites you to contribute to the open science and scholarship movement. Stay connected for updates, events, and opportunities. Follow us on X, formerly Twitter, and join our mailing list to be part of the conversation!