Preparing Your Research Material for the Future - 2014-06-09 - Humanities Division, University of Oxford

Preparing Your Research
Material for the Future
Slides provided by the Research Support
Team, IT Services, University of Oxford
What You Can Do Now to Avoid
Problems Later

What sort of material are we talking about?
“A reinterpretable representation of information in a formalized
manner suitable for communication, interpretation, or processing.”
Digital Curation Centre
Preparing your research
material for the future
Slide adapted from
the PrePARe Project

What sort of material are we talking about?
Any information you use in your
research
Slide adapted from
the PrePARe Project

What is research data management?
Storage
Organizing
Preservation
Documenting
Sharing
Choosing
technology
Versioning
Structuring
Backing up
Curation
Security

Thinking ahead is vital
 It’s easy to think of long term data
management as something only relevant
to the end of a project
 But many aspects of it
need planning from the
beginning

Carrots and sticks
 Work efficiently and
with minimum hassle
over the lifetime of the
project
 Save time and avoid
problems in the future
 Make it easy to share
your data
 University of Oxford
Policy on the
Management of
Research Data and
Records
 Funding body
requirements

University of Oxford policy
Introduced July 2012

 The full policy can be viewed on the University of
Oxford Research Data Management website
 Research data is defined as the information needed ‘to
support or validate a research project’s observations,
findings or outputs’
 Research data should be:
 Accurate, complete, identifiable,
retrievable, and securely stored
 Able to be made available to others

 Research data should be retained for ‘as long as they
are of continuing value to the researcher and the wider
research community’ – but a minimum of three years
 Specific requirements from funders take precedence
 Researchers are responsible for:
 Developing and documenting clear data management procedures
 Planning for the ongoing custodianship of their data
 Ensuring that legal, ethical, and funding body requirements are met
 Policy applies to University staff and doctoral students
 Depositing relevant research data may ultimately become a condition
of award for doctorates

Funders’ requirements
 Funding bodies are taking an increasing
interest in what happens to research data
 You may be required to make your data
publicly available at the end of a project
 Check the small print in your grant conditions
 Many funders require a data management plan
as part of grant applications
 Oxford’s RDM website provides a
summary of requirements

Why share material? Enable reuse
 Reduces duplication of
effort
 Allows public research
funding to be used more
effectively
 Use in contexts not
currently envisaged
 Extend research beyond
your discipline
Slide adapted from
the PrePARe Project

Why share material? Boost reputation
 Get credit for high quality
research
 Recognition for contribution
to research community
 Open data leads to increased
citations
 Of the data itself
 Of associated papers
Slide adapted from
the PrePARe Project

Why share material? Be a trailblazer!
 A paradigm shift in how research outputs are
viewed is occurring
 Data outputs are of increasing importance –
and are likely to become even more so
 Major journals are increasingly
looking to publish datasets
alongside articles
 Be at the forefront of an
important shift in the
academic world

What to consider sharing
 Newly digitized or transcribed material
 Collected or structured material – e.g.
databases
 Marked up texts or annotated
source materials
 Newly generated material
 Anything else with possible
reuse value
Introduction to research
data management
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eget fermentum nunc.

DOCUMENTATION AND
METADATA

Documentation and metadata
 Documentation is the contextual information required
to make material intelligible and aid interpretation
 A users’ guide to your data
 May apply to a whole collection, or to specific
aspects
 Metadata is similar, but usually more structured
 Conforms to set standards
 Machine readable

Make material understandable
What’s obvious
now might not
be in a few
months, years,
decades…
Adapted from ‘Clay Tablets with Linear B Script’ by Dennis, via Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/archer10/5692813531/
MAKE SURE
YOU CAN
UNDERSTAND
IT LATER
Slide adapted from
the PrePARe Project

Make material verifiable and reusable
• Detailing methods helps
people understand what
you did
• And helps make your
work reproducible
• Provide context to
minimize the risk of
misunderstanding or
misuse
Image by woodleywonderworks , via Flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/4588700881/
Slide adapted from
the PrePARe Project

Exercise
 In small groups, look at the sample data sheet
 Imagine you have just downloaded this dataset from an
archive
 What contextual or explanatory information is missing?
 Anything odd about the data that needs clarifying?
 What additional documentation would you like to see
supplied
 About specific items of information recorded here?
 About the data collection as a whole?

• Who created it, when and why
• Description of the item
• Methodology and methods
• Units of measurement
• Definitions of jargon, acronyms and code
• References to related data
Documentation – what to include
Slide adapted from
the PrePARe Project

Metadata – data about data
 A formal,
structured
description
of a dataset
 Used by
archives
to create
catalogue
records

Missing metadata – or the riddle of the
sixth toe
 This painting shows
Georgiana, Duchess of
Devonshire as Diana
 … or maybe Cynthia
 She has six toes – but
no one knows why
Public domain image from Wikimedia Commons:
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Georgiana_Cavendish,_Duchess_of_Devonshire_as_Diana.jpg

For discussion
 What data management
challenges have you
encountered?
 What strategies have you
personally found useful?
 Be ready to feed back to
the group

KEEPING YOUR DATA SAFE

http://blogs.ch.cam.ac.uk/pmr/2011/08/01/why-you-need-a-data-management-plan/
You can only
preserve what
you still have…
Slide adapted from
the PrePARe Project
… and backing
up is easier
than replacing
lost data

Make multiple copies…
…and keep them in different places
Automate the
process if you can
Slide adapted from
the PrePARe Project

IT Services: Data Back-up on the HFS
 HFS is Oxford’s central back-up and archiving
service
 Free of charge to University staff and
postgraduates
 Automated back-ups of machines connected to
University network
 Copies kept in multiple places

Think about your storage media…
… and about file formats
Slide adapted from
the PrePARe Project

Data security
 If you’re working with sensitive data, it’s
essential to ensure that every copy kept has
appropriate security
 InfoSec at IT Services can provide advice –
see http://www.it.ox.ac.uk/infosec/ for more
details

WHAT HAPPENS AT THE END
OF THE PROJECT?

Repositories and archives
 Data repositories or archives offer a secure long-term
home for research data and other reusable material
 Repositories for humanities material include the UK
Data Archive, the Oxford Text Archive, the Archaeology
Data Service, and others
 Databib and Re3Data.org offer searchable catalogues
 Oxford will soon have its own data archive

Figshare – a DIY option
 Free online sharing platform for data and other
research objects
 Shared items are allocated a DataCite DOI
 A possible alternative to conventional repositories
 If no suitable
repository is
available
 If you need a
way of sharing
in a hurry

Data sharing – concerns
 Ethical and legal concerns
 Confidential or sensitive data
 Third party data
 Professional concerns
 Intended publication
 Commercial issues
 Planning with sharing in mind from the
beginning can help alleviate problems

• Redact or embargo if there is good reason
Share – but maybe not everything
Slide adapted from
the PrePARe Project

Video by NYU Health Sciences Libraries: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2zK3sAtr-4

Data licensing
 A licence clarifies the conditions for accessing
and making use of a dataset
 User knows what’s allowed without asking further
permission
 Doesn’t exclude possibility of specific requests to
go beyond the terms of the licence
 For databases, structure and content may be
covered by separate rights

Data licences - examples
 Creative Common licences
 Widely used and recognized
 Six different flavours, plus CC0 public domain dedication
 http://creativecommons.org/
 Open Data Commons
 Specifically designed for datasets
 Recognizes the structure/content distinction
 http://opendatacommons.org/

Data licensing - guidance
 ‘How to License Research Data’
 A guide from the Digital Curation Centre
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides/license-research-data

CASE STUDIES

Case study: Digital Miscellanies Index
http://digitalmiscellaniesindex.org/

Digital Miscellanies Index: evolving data
 Team of 11 researchers, led by Dr Abigail Williams
(English Faculty)
 Database indexing authors, poems, genres, first lines
and publishers in a total of ~120,000-150,000 poems
 Originally a relational (SQL) database
 Performance issues with relational database – data
converted to XML by external consultants
 Now online and searchable in an eXist (XML) database

Digital Miscellanies Index: onward and
upward
 Changing formats originally more contingency than
strategy, but data now in a good format for:
 Preservation – open well-documented standard, no reliance
on proprietary software
 Reuse – now combining with other XML resources as part of
a broader linked data miscellanies project (more Leverhulme
funding just awarded for this!)
 Also, conversion process proved useful:
 Forced researchers to think clearly about data structures
 Assumptions and decisions had to be examined and
documented

Case study: Oxford Roman Economy Project
http://oxrep.classics.ox.ac.uk/

Oxford Roman Economy Project
 Databases collecting archaeological and documentary
evidence enabling analysis various aspects of
economic activity in the Roman world (tax rolls, mines,
olive oil production, etc.)
 Originally 5-year project, now extended
 Funded by Baron Lorne Thyssen through his Augustus
Foundation
 Led by Professors Andrew Wilson (Archaeology) &
Alan Bowman (CSAD)

OxREP: documented data
 PostgreSQL database
 Searchable via a bespoke PHP interface on the project
website
 Data clearly structured into spatial data and
events/keywords/references/notes describing them
 Allows users to combine with other data
 All tables easily downloadable as CSV
 Clear documentation about how to use, interpret, and
cite the data

OxREP: a strong position
 Good position for preservation and reuse:
 Repeatable process to make data available
in open portable format
 Already planned release/licensing
 Current usage well-documented

Paths and principles
 Many possible paths to good preservation, but
some key principles are:
 Open standards, open-source formats
 Be clear about what data you’re collecting/creating
and why
 Documentation, documentation, documentation

DATA MANAGEMENT
PLANNING

Data management plans
 A document which may be created in the early
stages of a project
 While planning, applying for funding, or setting up
 An initial plan may be expanded later
 Details plans and expectations for data
 Nature of data and its creation or acquisition
 Storage and security
 Preservation and sharing

Exercise
 Using the resources available, have a go at
drafting a data management plan for your own
research
 If there are questions you can’t answer at this
stage, make a note of
 What you need to find out
 Decisions you need to make

Digital Curation Centre
 A national service
providing advice and
resources
 Create a data
management plan
using the DMP online
tool
https://dmponline.dcc.ac.uk/
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/

DMP20
 An online form that allows the creation of a
simple data management plan
 Based on David Shotton’s Twenty Questions for
Research Data Management
http://www.miidi.org/dmp/

‘In preparing for
battle, I have always
found that plans are
useless but planning
is indispensable.’
Dwight D. Eisenhower

UNIVERSITY SERVICES

ORA-Data (formerly known as DataBank)
 The University of Oxford’s institutional data archive
 Will work alongside ORA-Publications to form a
composite University archive
 Possible to link items in ORA-Publications to
datasets in ORA-Data
 Phase 1 launch planned
for 2014-15 academic year
 Full service will follow

ORA-Data – institutional data archive
 Long term preservation for Oxford research datasets
without another natural home
 In some cases, may a suitable home for DPhil data
 Datasets will be assigned DOIs
 Depositors can opt to make datasets publicly available,
embargoed for a fixed period, or hidden

ORA-Data – institutional data catalogue
 Information on the nature, location, and availability of
Oxford-created datasets stored in other archives
 Will harvest metadata from compatible data stores
 Researchers depositing data elsewhere strongly
encouraged to add a record to ORA-Data
 Working towards a comprehensive record of Oxford
research data
 Should provide a substantial resource for researchers
seeking datasets for reuse

ORDS – Online Research Database
Service
 Specifically designed for academic research data
 Cloud-hosted and automatically backed up
 Web interface makes collaboration straightforward
 If desired, databases can easily be made public
 Designed to permit easy archiving
 Currently being used by a small group of test users –
will become more widely available
later in 2014
 http://ords.ox.ac.uk/

IT Learning Programme
 Over 200 different IT
courses
 Covering software, skills,
and new technologies
 ITLP Portfolio offers
course materials and
other resources
http://portfolio.it.ox.ac.uk/
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/itlp/

IT Services: Research Support Team
 Can assist with technical aspects of research
projects at all stages of the project lifecycle
 Help with DMPs, selecting software or storage, etc.
 But the earlier you seek advice, the better
 For more information, see:
http://research.it.ox.ac.uk/

FURTHER INFORMATION AND
RESOURCES

Research data management website
 Oxford’s central
advisory website
 University policy
is available
 Questions?
Email
researchdata
@ox.ac.uk
http://researchdata.ox.ac.uk/

Research Skills Toolkit
 Website and hands-
on workshops
 A guide to software,
University services,
and other tools and
resources for
research
 Requires SSO login
http://www.skillstoolkit.ox.ac.uk/

Research Data MANTRA
 Free online
interactive
training modules
 Aimed at
postgraduates
and early career
researchers
http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra/

Any questions?
Ask now, or email us on
researchdata@ox.ac.uk
Slides and handouts available from
http://research.it.ox.ac.uk/rdmcourses

Rights and re-use
 This presentation is part of a series of research data management
training resources prepared by the IT Services Research Support
Team at the University of Oxford
 The slideshow is based on one developed during the Oxford-based
DaMaRO Project. Parts of it also draw on teaching materials
produced by the PrePARe Project, DATUM for Health, and DataTrain
Archaeology
 With the exception of clip art used with permission from Microsoft,
commercial logos and trademarks, and images specifically credited
to other sources, the slideshow is made available under a Creative
Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike License
 Within the terms of this licence, we actively encourage sharing,
adaptation, and re-use of this material

Preparing Your Research Material for the Future - 2014-06-09 - Humanities Division, University of Oxford

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Preparing Your Research Material for the Future - 2014-06-09 - Humanities Division, University of Oxford