Ben Mollitt delivered a session on research data management (RDM).

1. Research Data
Management
(RDM)
19.10.16
Ben Mollitt,
Research Data Manager

2. This session will cover:
 what is research data and RDM?
 the benefits of RDM and making research data openly
available
 policy environment and funders’ expectations
 research data lifecycle
 support and resources for managing your data
 demonstrations of useful tools / services
Overview

3. What is research data?
Any recorded information necessary to support or
validate a research project’s observations, findings
or outputs, regardless of format.
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/media/livacuk/computingservices/research-data-
management/researchdatamanagementpolicy.pdf

4. What is research data management?
“an explicit process covering the creation and
stewardship of research materials to enable
their use for as long as they retain value.”
Data Management is part of good
research practice

5. Benefits of managing research data
and making it openly available
- Integrity and efficiency of research
- Impact and visibility of research
- To stop yourself drowning in irrelevant information
- In case you need the data later
- Increased citations
- Data sharing and re-use
- Avoid duplication
- Interdisciplinary collaborations
- Data security and preservation
- Enables easier location and understanding of files
- Compliance with funder policies

6. Trend towards coalescence on open
research data
Principle 1 - enabler of high quality research, facilitator of innovation
and safeguards good practice
Principle 2 - sound reasons why openness may need to be restricted
but must be justified and justifiable
Principle 3 - carries significant cost which must be respected by all
parties
Principle 4 - right of the creators to reasonable first use is recognised
Principle 5 - use of others’ data should always conform to legal, ethical
and regulatory framework
Principle 6 - good data management is fundamental to all stages of
research process and should be established at outset
Principle 7 - data curation is vital to make data useful and for long-
term preservation
Principle 8 - data supporting publications should be accessible by the
publication date and citeable
Principle 9 - support for development of appropriate data skills is
recognised
Principle 10 - regular reviews of progress towards open data should be
taken.
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/documents/documents/concordatonopenresearchdata-pdf/

7. What do funders ultimately expect?
 Data management plan
 Timely release of data
 Open data sharing
 Preservation of data

8. The Research Data Lifecycle
PLAN
RE-USE
PUBLISH &
SHARE
CREATE &
ORGANISE
STORE
PRESERVE

9. The Data Lifecycle - Plan
PLAN
RE-USE
PUBLISH &
SHARE
CREATE &
ORGANISE
STORE
PRESERVE
 Data Management
Plans
 Ethics
 Intellectual Property

10. DMPonline
dmponline.dcc.ac.uk
• A web-based tool to help researchers
write data management plans
• Contains templates and guidance for
many of the main funders
• Allows DMPs to be shared with
collaborators as they are being
developed
• Facility to export DMP in a variety of
different formats for submission with a
grant application
• Funder templates will be customised
with Liverpool-specific guidance and
best practice examples

11. The Data Lifecycle - Store
PLAN
RE-USE
PUBLISH &
SHARE
CREATE &
ORGANISE
STORE
PRESERVE
 Storage options
 Access options
 Security
 Back up

12. Liverpool’s Active DataStore
• Fast, high quality, high
capacity storage with
guaranteed backup
and resilience
• Data is conveniently
accessible from
wherever and
whenever required
using DatAnywhere
• 1TB of storage per
research project by
default. Additional
storage available on
request https://liverpool.service-now.com/ess/order_rdm.do

13. The Data Lifecycle – Publish &
Share
PLAN
RE-USE
PUBLISH &
SHARE
CREATE &
ORGANISE
STORE
PRESERVE
 Where to
publish
 Data access
statements
 Licensing

14.  Domain data repository
 General data repository e.g. Figshare, Zenodo, Dryad
 Institutional data repository – Liverpool’s DataCat
 Journal supplementary material
 Project or departmental web page
Options for publishing data

15. What is metadata?
 Metadata for DISCOVERY
 Metadata enabling REUSE
It can be helpful to define research metadata by its use:

16. DataCat: Liverpool’s Research Data Catalogue
datacat.liverpool.ac.uk/
• Create records of information about
finalised research data, and save data in
a secure online environment
• Two types of record:
Discovery-only – data is held
elsewhere but a record is provided to
help people find it
Discovery and data – data is also
deposited into DataCat, which creates
a Digital Object Identifier (DOI) for
citations
• Not for storing of active data, i.e. data
being added to, or not yet cleaned and
processed – see Active DataStore

17. Data Access Statements
Data Access Statement:
All data supporting this study are openly available from
https://dx.doi.org/10.17638/datacat.liverpool.ac.uk/171

18. The Data Lifecycle – Re-use
PLAN
RE-USE
PUBLISH &
SHARE
CREATE &
ORGANISE
STORE
PRESERVE
• Data Citation
• Innovative reuse
• Secondary/Meta
Analysis
• Teaching and
Learning

19. • A dataset citation includes all of the same
components as any other citation
• Creator (Publication Year): Title. Publisher. Identifier
Data Citation
Example:
Irino, T; Tada, R (2009): Chemical and mineral compositions of
sediments from ODP Site 127-797. Geological Institute, University
of Tokyo. http://dx.doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.726855

20. Summary of RDM services at Liverpool
 Data Management Planning
 DMPonline – customised for Liverpool
 Active DataStore
 Storage infrastructure and secure backups for active data
 Data Catalogue
 Preservation and sharing of finalised research data
 Dataset validation – checking of the metadata
 DOI minting – to provide a persistent identifier for datasets

21. Further information and contact details
- Liverpool RDM web pages:
www.liverpool.ac.uk/csd/research-data-management/
- Liverpool RDM policy:
www.liverpool.ac.uk/media/livacuk/computingservices/
research-data- management/Research,Data,Management,
Policy,04.pdf
- RDM queries:
data@liverpool.ac.uk
or
Ben Mollitt (Research Data Manager)
ben.mollitt@liverpool.ac.uk
Gary Jeffers (Research Data Management Officer)
gary.jeffers@liverpool.ac.uk
Victoria Barragan (Research Data Management Assistant)
vb10@liverpool.ac.uk

22. Thank you.