PUSH and HSI hosted the Readying Your University to Open Data Compliance Webinar on January 18, 2019. In this webinar, Utah State University representatives shared their policy, procedures, and guidance for complying with funders’ data management and open data requirements.

1. USU’s Roadmap to Open Data
Kevin Peterson, Director, Division of Sponsored Programs
Betty Rozum, Data Librarian

2. Open Data Challenges
 Faced by most universities
 Time and money!
 Time to document data, to teach others to document and share
data.
 Cost of repositories, staff
 Attitudes
 Fear – of being scooped, of not knowing what your are doing
 Unwillingness to share data
 Uncertainty
 Difficulty understanding expectations of Funders, Institutions,
Journals - and keeping these expectations aligned
 Keeping up with rules
 Protection of data and is it okay to release it?

3. Challenges – and a mandate
 Our goal today:
 Map our process
 Provide a timeline
 Outline our accomplishments
 Discuss our challenges
 Discuss our initial outcomes
 Discuss what lies ahead

4. The Mandate – 2013 OSTP Memo
 Federal agencies with over $100M in R&D had to develop
plans to make publications and data from federally funded
research freely available to the public.
 USU needed a means to facilitate access to data, support
researchers as they met requirements of the mandate, and
ensure the university could meet compliance terms.

5. USU Roadmap
 Create a Data Librarian position
 Bring campus stakeholders together
 Write and implement a Research Data Policy
 Implement a process to create auditable records to facilitate
access to data and publications

6. Timeline
 Summer 2015: Data librarian position created
 Fall 2015: Taskforce of stakeholders created
 Fall 2016: Solution implemented

7. Stakeholders
 Representatives from:
 Research Office
 Library
 Information Technology
 Faculty
 In one year, a solution was conceptualized, developed and
formally implemented
 Larger group met bi-monthly and smaller groups met more
frequently

8. Needs
 Research Data Policy
 USU did not have a policy to describe the University’s position
regarding rights and responsibilities of researchers and the
institution in the
 use,
 retention,
 maintenance,
 and sharing of data
 produced as part of the USU research enterprise.
 USU Policy 588: Research Data went into effect May 7, 2017

9. Facilitate Funder Compliance
 USU aimed to develop a process that would
 Demonstrate to Funders that USU was making good faith effort to
comply with mandates
 Express to Researchers that complying with funder mandates was
an institutional priority
 Demonstrate to Researchers that resources were available to
support them in meeting funder mandates to make data open

10. The Process
 Relies on Division of Sponsored Programs, Library, Researcher
 Uses existing resources: Kuali Grants Management Software,
DigitalCommons@USU Institutional Repository, Library Catalog

11. The Process
 Proposal Awarded:
 Email to PI from Sponsored Programs; Library is copied
 Primary Metadata Document (spreadsheet) with information about
award filled out
 Reminder about the process of making DMP open and need to
deposit data and publications
 Offer of assistance
 Request of DMP if it isn’t already available
 Library creates record to represent award

12. The Process
 Subsequent Years – annual anniversary of award
 SPO sends PI the PMD and asks for updates to be sent to Library
 Library verifies publication and data deposits, contacts PI as
needed, creates records in repository and catalog and indicates
these on PMD
 Library updates award record with new PMD and notifies SPO
 This continues every year until all data and publications are
deposited or two years after close out.

13. Challenges
 Lack of responses from PI’s to reminders to update PMDs
 Record keeping
 How to handle close out in the future (manual process)
 Lack of automation for several steps
 Training – internal staff have so many tasks and have many
things to remember
 Faculty confusion regarding the process and the PMD
 Limited resources (human, financial)

14. Initial Outcomes
 87 Awards set up
 21 updated with second year data; 3 updated with third year
data
 Over 1500 data management plans downloaded
 Increased collaboration between Library and Research Office
and safety checks
 Increased faculty awareness of funder requirements and
resources available to them
 Improved relationship between Research Office and Faculty as
a result of interactions, trainings, and services

15. Next Steps
 Continue Library-Sponsored Programs-Research Office
Collaboration and Communication
 Develop outreach and communication program to clarify
process
 Conduct Focus Groups with Faculty to determine ways to
improve what we do