Andy Turner's slides presented at the Directions for Research Data Management in UK universities event on 6/7 November 2014

1. Researcher needs – a
researchers perspective
Andy Turner
Turner, A.G.D. (2014) Researcher needs – a researchers perspective. Presentation slides for the Jisc,
RLUK, SCONUL, UCISA, ARMA and RUGIT Directions for Research Data Management in UK Universities
Meeting, Cambridge, 2014-11-06, http://bit.ly/RDMRP14

2. Outline
● Researchers
● Research
● Research data
● Researcher needs
● Key issues
● Personal reflections

3. Researchers
● Individuals
o Professionals
 Career stage
 Status
 Roles
● Leaders, assistants
o Students
 Postgraduates
 Undergraduates

4. ● Organisations
o Research groups/centres/institutes
 Multi-institutional
● Multi-national
● UK based
 Within institutions
o Status
o Structure and support
o Sustainability

5. Research
● Vast range of subjects
o STEM
o Social Science
o Arts and Humanities
o Language
● Directly funded projects
o Range of funding organisations
 Publicly funded
 Privately funded

6. ● Indirectly funded projects
● Ethics
o Research Data Management (RDM)
● Learning can be messy
● Types of research
o Practical, Theoretical
o Goal driven, Curiosity driven
o Qualitative, Quantitative, Experimental

7. Research Data
● Reference/source/input data
● Derived data
● New data
● Observations and measurements
● Synthetically generated data
● Reproducible
o Practicalities
o Non-reproducible data

8. ● Curators and archivists
o Academic, Government, Galleries, Libraries,
Archives, Museums, Private
● Open data
● Restricted access data
● Big data
o Volume, Variety, Velocity, Veracity, Value

9. Physical research data
● Samples
○ Soil
○ Human tissue
○ Physical artefacts and compilations
■ Old manuscripts
■ Film
● Apparatus for accessing and viewing
research data

10. Digital research data
● Two main categories
o Data not about people
o Data about people
 Personal data
● Confidentiality
● Disclosure control
 Anonymised/pseudonymised
● Data about places

11. Researcher needs
● Researchers need resources to survive as
researchers
o Are good Data Management Planning and RDM
rewarded commensurately?
● RDM needs vary depending on
o The role, skills, experience and status of
researchers
o Researchers awareness of the resources they can
use to support and develop their research

12. ● Researchers applying for funding are
expected to budget for research storage and
in many cases develop a DMP as part of the
application process
o Some may need more help with this than others in
order to be successful

13. ● Researchers working on research projects
should
o Develop and implement the projects DMP
 Organise the projects data
 Develop metadata
o Consider the difficulties others may encounter in
retracing their work
 Conclusions are stronger if they can be verified
and subject to further closer scrutiny

14. ● Researchers should
o Develop an awareness of and adopt open principles
 Use of open standards
 Use and development of (sustainable) open
source software that is well tested and
documented
 Open access publishing
● Appropriate credit for research data
developed in projects that is used by others

15. Key issues
● Research data sharing
o What new research is enabled?
 What new discoveries and developments can be
based in part on the research data you make
available/curate
o When to share and how to share?
o Due credit
● Storage
o Physical storage

16. o Digital storage
o How much protection do we need for storage?
 The more protection the greater the cost
o Some research will generate or require the storage
of very large volumes of digital data
 Enormous volumes of active research data in
computational simulations
o Long term archiving
 How long term?

17. o Will the application for research project funding be
uncompetitive if the costs for data storage are not
minimised by taking greater risks with regard data
storage?
o What to store and what to decide to destroy and
when?
● Metadata
● Software
● Validation and verification

18. ● Metric, credit and funding
● e-Infrastructure
o EU, National, Regional, Institutional
● Personal data, ethics and further research
● Data re-use
● Sustainability and risk

19. Personal reflections
● Mess
o Stan’s stroke
o Death of the webserver
o It all went down the portal again!
● Best practise
● Research Data Leeds
● Ethical dilemmas
o Consent and valuable data

20. Notes
● Directions for Research Data Management
in UK Universities Meeting, Cambridge,
November 2014
o http://bit.ly/D4RDM14