Fostering open science in social science

FOSTER_logoOn 10th of June, the Data Library team ran two workshops in association with the EU Horizon 2020 project, FOSTER (Facilitate Open Science Training for European Research), and the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science.

The aim of the morning workshop, “Good practice in data management & data sharing with social research,” was to provide new entrants into the Scottish Graduate School of Social Science with a grounding in research data management using our online interactive training resource MANTRA, which covers good practice in data management and issues associated with data sharing.

The morning started with a brief presentation by Robin Rice on ‘open science’ and its meaning for the social sciences. Pauline Ward then demonstrated the importance of data management plans to ensure work is safeguarded and that data sharing is made possible. I introduced MANTRA briefly, and then Laine Ruus assigned different MANTRA units to participants and asked them to briefly go through the units and extract one or two key messages and report back to the rest of the group. After the coffee break we had another presentation on ethics, informed consent and the barriers for sharing, and we finished the morning session with a ‘Do’s and Dont’s exercise where we asked participants to write in post-it notes the things they remembered, the things they were taking with them from the workshop: green for things they should DO, and pink for those they should NOT. Here are some of the points the learners posted:

DO
– consider your usernames & passwords
– read the Data Protection Act
– check funder/institution regulations/policies
– obtain informed consent
– design a clear consent form
– give participants info about the research
– inform participants of how we will manage data
– confidentiality
– label your data with enough info to retrieve it in future
– develop a data management plan
– follow the certain policies when you re-use dataset[s] created by others
– have a clear data storage plan
– think about how & how long you will store your data
– store data in at least 3 places, in at least 2 separate locations
– backup!
– consider how/where you back up your data
– delete or archive old versions
– data preservation
– keep your data safe and secure with the help of facilities of fund bodies or university
– think about sharing
– consider sharing at all stages. Think about who will use my data next
– share data (responsibly)

DON’T
– unclear informed consent
– a sense of forcing participants to be part of research
– do not store sensitive information unless necessary
– don’t staple consent forms to de-identified data records/store them together
– take information security for granted
– assume all software will be able to handle your data
– don’t assume you will remember stuff. Document your data
– assume people understand
– disclose participants’ identity
– leave computer on
– share confidential data
– leave your laptop on the bus!
– leave your laptop on the train!
– leave your files on a train!
– don’t forget it is not just my data, it is public data
– forget to future proof

Robin Rice presenting at FOSTERing Open Science workshop

Our message was that open science will thrive when researchers:

  • organise and version their data files effectively,
  • provide comprehensive and sufficient documentation for others to understand and replicate results and thus cite the source properly
  • know how to store and transport your data safely and securely (ensuring backup and encryption)
  • understand legal and ethical requirements for managing data about human subjects
  • Recognise the importance of good research data management practice in your own context

The afternoon workshop on “Overcoming obstacles to sharing data about human subjects” built on one of the main themes introduced in the morning, with a large overlap of attendees. The ethical and regulatory issues in this area can appear daunting. However, data created from research with human subjects are valuable, and therefore are worth sharing for all the same reasons as other research data (impact, transparency, validation etc). So it was heartening to find ourselves working with a group of mostly new PhD students, keen to find ways to anonymise, aggregate, or otherwise transform their data appropriately to allow sharing.

Robin Rice introduced the Data Protection Act, as it relates to research with human subjects, and ethical considerations. Naturally, we directed our participants to MANTRA, which has detailed information on the ethical and practical issues, with specific modules on “Data protection, rights & access” and “Sharing, preservation & licensing”. Of course not all data are suitable for sharing, and there are risks to be considered.

In many cases, data can be anonymised effectively, to allow the data to be shared. Richard Welpton from the UK Data Archive shared practical information on anonymisation approaches and tools for ‘statistical disclosure control’, recommending sdcMicroGUI (a graphical interface for carrying out anonymisation techniques, which is an R package, but should require no knowledge of the R language).

DrNiamhMooreFinally Dr Niamh Moore from University of Edinburgh shared her experiences of sharing qualitative data. She spoke about the need to respect the wishes of subjects, her research gathering oral history, and the enthusiasm of many of her human subjects to be named in her research outputs, in a sense to own their own story, their own words.

Links:

Rocio von Jungenfeld & Pauline Ward
EDINA and Data Library

Data Visualisation with D3 workshop

Last week I attended the 4th HSS Digital Day of Ideas 2015. Amongst networking and some interesting presentations on the use of digital technologies in humanities research (the two presentations I attended focused on analysis and visualisation of historical records), I attended the hands-on `Data Visualisation with D3′ workshop run by Uta Hinrichs, which I thoroughly enjoyed.

The workshop was a crash course to start visualising data combining d3.js and leaflet.js libraries, with HTML, SVG, and CSS. For this, we needed to have installed a text editor (e.g. Notepad++, TextWrangler) and a server environment for local development (e.g. WAMP, MAMP). With the software installed beforehand, I was ready to script as soon as I got there. We were recommended to use Chrome (or Safari), for it seems to work best for JavaScript, and the developer tools it offers are pretty good.

First, we started with the basics of how the d3.js library and other JavaScript libraries, such as jquery or leaflet, are incorporated into basic HTML pages. D3 is an open source library developed by Mike Bostocks. All the ‘visualisation magic’ happens in the browser, which takes the HTML file and processes the scripts as displayed in the console. The data used in the visualisation is pulled into the console, thus you cannot hide the data.

For this visualisation (D3 Visual Elements), the browser uses the content of the HTML file to call the d3.js library and the data into the console. In this example, the HTML contains a bit of CSS and SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics) element with a d3.js script which pulls data from a CSV file containing the details: author and number of books. The visualisation displays the authors’ names and bars representing the number of books each author has written. The bars change colour and display the number of books when you hover over.

Visualising CSV data with D3 JavaScript library

The second visualisation we worked on was the combination of geo-referenced data and leaflet.js library. Here, we combine the d3.js and leaflet.js libraries to display geographic data from a CSV file. First we ensured the OpenStreetMap loaded, then pulled the CSV data in and last customised the map using a different map tile. We also added data points to the map and pop-up tags.

Visualising CSV data using leaflet JavaScript library

In this 2-hour workshop, Uta Hinrichs managed to give a flavour of the possibilities that JavaScript libraries offer and how ‘relatively easy’ it is to visualise data online.

Workshop links:

Other links:

Rocio von Jungenfeld
EDINA and Data Library

Highlights from the RDM Programme Progress Report: Jan – Feb 2015

The Library and University Collections (L&UC) in association with project partner Manchester University received funding from the Jisc “Research Data Spring” programme to define and develop an open source Data Vault application which will allow data creators to describe and store data safely in one of the growing number of archival storage options. Phase 1 of the project started in March 2015.

The University of Edinburgh (UoE) were invited to contribute to a series of EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) Compliance Case Studies. Stuart MacDonald, RDM Service Coordinator, was interviewed by Jisc and the DCC in relation to the RDM programme and institutional compliancy with forthcoming EPSRC research data expectations. The case study will be published on the Jisc website in May 2015.

RDM Service Coordinator Stuart MacDonald co-presented with Rory Macneil (RSpace) their practice paper “Service Integration to Enhance RDM: RSpace electronic laboratory notebook (ELN) case study” at the International Conference on Digital Curation (IDCC) in London (Feb 2015). The paper has been published in the International Journal of Digital Curation (http://www.ijdc.net/index.php/ijdc/article/view/10.1.163), open access.

The RDM Service Coordinator also presented on ‘RDM Training Initiatives @ Edinburgh’ at the “Comparing Notes: Training Librarians for Research Data Management and Open Science Support” workshop at IDCC.

An EPSRC Expectations Awareness Survey was sent out to 98 EPSRC grant holders of which 38 responded. 9** grant holders agreed to participate in a follow-up interview. The findings of the interviews will follow shortly. Dr Evamaria Krause (Marburgh University, Germany) completed a 6 week internship with L&UC where she assisted with the EPSRC Expectations Awareness Survey and EPSRC grant holder interview exercises.

All Schools in the College of Humanities and Social Science (CHSS) have now added links to RDM Programme website and other RDM pages via their intranets. RDM Project Plan deadlines and deliverables which underpin the RDM Roadmap have been updated.* For more details visit the RDM Programme wiki (some content only available to UoE staff).

Four tailored Data Management Plans sessions have been organised with research groups in the College of Medicine and Veterinary Medicine and CHSS, and two workshops for the European Association for Health Information and Libraries (EAHIL) conference in Edinburgh are scheduled to run in June 2015.

Edinburgh DataShare release 1.71 has been announced with new features including faceted browsing, SOLR usage statistics, size limit on assisted deposit of items increased from 5Gb to 10Gb.

DataSync (a Dropbox-like service in development) was themed and made available for beta testing to Information Services colleagues.

Links:

* IT Infrastructure input pending
** 1 PhD student who was forwarded the survey agreed to be interviewed

Stuart Macdonald
RDM Service Coordinator

Managing data: photographs in research

In collaboration with Scholarly Communications, the Data Library participated in the workshop “Data: photographs in research” as part of a series of workshops organised by Dr Tom Allbeson and Dr Ella Chmielewska for the pilot project “Fostering Photographic Research at CHSS” supported by the College of Humanities and Social Science (CHSS) Challenge Investment Fund.

In our research support roles, Theo Andrew and I addressed issues associated with finding and using photographs from repositories, archives and collections, and the challenges of re-using photographs in research publications. Workshop attendants came from a wide range of disciplines, and were at different stages in their research careers.

First, I gave a brief intro on terminology and research data basics, and navigated through media platforms and digital repositories like Jisc Media Hub, VADS, Wellcome Trust, Europeana, Live Art Archive, Flickr Commons, Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (Muybridge http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a45870) – links below.

Eadweard Muybridge. 1878. The Horse in motion. Photograph.

From the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog

Then, Theo presented key concepts of copyright and licensing, which opened up an extensive discussion on what things researchers have to consider when re-using photographs and what institutional support researchers expect to have. Some workshop attendees shared their experience of reusing photographs from collections and archives, and discussed the challenges they face with online publications.

The last presentation tackling the basics of managing photographic research data was not delivered due to time constraints. The presentation was for researchers who produce photographic materials, however, advice on best RDM practice is relevant to any researcher independently of whether they are producing primary data or reusing secondary data. There may be another opportunity to present the remaining slides to CHSS researchers at a future workshop.

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