Earlier this year, the Research Data Service team set out to interview some of our users to learn about how they manage their data, the challenges they face, and what they’d like to see from our service. We engaged a PhD student, Clarissa, who successfully carried out this survey and compiled use cases from the responses. We also engaged the University of Edinburgh Communications team to film and edit some of the user interviews in order to produce educational and promotional videos. We are now delighted to launch the first of these videos here.

In this case study video, Dr Bert Remijsen speaks about his successful experience archiving and sharing his Linguistics research data through Edinburgh DataShare, and seeing people from all corners of the world making use of the data in “unforeseeable” ways.

Over the coming weeks we will release the written case studies for internal users, and we will make the other videos also available on Media Hopper and YouTube. These will address topics including data management planning, archiving and sharing data, and adapting practices around personal data for GDPR compliance and training in Research Data Management. Staff and users will talk about the guidance and solutions provided by the Research Data Service for openly sharing data – and conversely restricting access to sensitive data – as well as supporting researchers in producing meaningful and useful Data Management Plans.

The team is also continuing to analyse the valuable input from our participants, and we are working towards implementing some of the helpful ideas they have kindly contributed.