The (ALLEA) E-Humanities Working Group is seeking feedback on its draft guidance for humanities researchers working with data:

Recommendations for Sustainable and FAIR Data Sharing in the Humanities

Deadline: 15 July 2019

There is a growing consensus that research data needs to be FAIR – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable.  That is, it must be managed, organised, preserved, and open to scrutiny and reuse. For this to happen requires a collective rethink of the role of data in the research lifecycle and a change in organisational culture and practices, both across the UK and internationally.

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UCL institutional Research Data Repository was launched June 2019

After 2 years of collaboration with provider Figshare, the Research Data Repository is live!  This free, open service will allow all UCL researchers (doctoral and beyond) to publish, preserve and share data underpinning research – or other potentially useful data.  Free, open access to data is central to FAIR data principles and enables replicable research – key aspects of Open Science.

On 5 June 2019, UCL researchers, PhD students and staff joined  Library Services and Research IT Services teams to celebrate the launch.

Find out more information about the UCL Research Data Repository  and Research Data Repository FAQs on the UCL Research Data Management Repository webpages

5 reasons to use the UCL Research Data Repository

• repository storage complies with research funder requirements to preserve research data for 10 years or more
• publishing data as a research output takes little further effort and makes your research more discoverable and citable
• greater impact and visibility will enhance your academic profile
• published data can be validated and tested by others – a sign of robust methodology
• sharing data is likely to become a key performance indicator as research practices become more open

Additional benefits of sharing your data publicly

• making your data available can lead to new collaborations and partnerships
• allowing data to be reused and avoiding doubling up makes the best use of funding
• published data provides great resources for education and training

The Research Data Management team plans to deliver tailored training on using the UCL Data Repository later this year at different UCL departments.

Join UCL Reproducibility

Subscribe to the UCL reproducibility mailing list for news and updates, invitations to contribute and training opportunities. 

Attend a Reproducibilitea talk

See more information and 2019 ReproducibiliTea UCL topics and dates.

Colleagues from all disciplines, sceptics and non-UCL, welcome.

Research Data Management blogs

• Making UCL Research Reproducible
• How long should I keep my data?
• Who owns my data and what happens when I leave the University?
• UCL General Data Protection Regulation
• Personal and sensitive research data and the law (useful 2016 blog post pre-GDPR)
• Where can I find UCL policies regarding research data, information security and data protection?

Further reading

• Five selfish reasons to work reproducibly (Genome Biology article)
• FAIR data principles
• How do you deal with a problem like reproducibility?

This blog was updated 13 June 2019.

The rapid growth of social media has inevitably led to a wealth of data into all aspects of our everyday lives. At the same time, this has been accompanied by concerns about how we use data harvested from social media sources. There is already a growing literature out there on the ethical implications of using social media and so this FAQ will aim to briefly summarise some of key arguments that researchers will need to consider.

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Developing a policy for metrics at UCL

UCL has been developing a set of principles on the responsible use of bibliometrics and other ways to measure research. This builds on UCL’s signing of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment in 2015; responsible evaluation practices in the 2017 UCL Academic Careers Framework; and UCL’s commitment to Open Science.

This Town Hall meeting and panel discussion aims to get feedback on the proposed principles, which we are planning to develop into a formal policy in the coming year, and to discuss the issues surrounding the use of quantitative research metrics.

The meeting will be followed by a public survey on the use of metrics and the proposed principles, to gather additional feedback from those unable to attend.

Registration for the event (via Eventbrite)

Schedule

– Introduction – Professor David Price, Vice-Provost (Research)

– Responsible metrics in practice – Dr. Elizabeth Gadd, Loughborough University

– Overview of the new principles – Dr. Paul Ayris, Pro-Vice-Provost (UCL Libraries)

– Panel discussion and public questions

Free event for UCL researchers and staff.

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.

Speakers include:

• Prof. David Price, Vice-Provost (Research), UCL
• Dr Paul Ayris, Pro-Vice-Provost, UCL Library Services
• Catriona MacCallum, Director of Open Science, Hindawi
• Emily Sena, University of Edinburgh
• James Wilsdon, University of Sheffield
• Simon Hettrick, Sustainable Software Institute

Afternoon workshops will cover:

• How do we make Open the default at UCL
• How to make your data open (and FAIR)?
• Citizen Science
• Open Peer review
• Open Education

Registration available via Eventbrite. Please contact lib-researchsupport@ucl.ac.uk with any questions.

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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