The big 3-0-0-0: DataShare reaches three thousand datasets

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Confetti banner says "3,000th deposit!!!" 2021-08-02

Timestamp showing the accession of the deposit on the 2nd of August.

We’re thrilled Edinburgh DataShare has just ingested its 3,000th deposit:

Davey, Thomas; Draycott, Samuel; Pillai, Ajit; Gabl, Roman; Jordan, Laura-Beth. (2021). Wave buoy in current – experimental data, [dataset]. University of Edinburgh. School of Engineering. Institute for Energy Systems. FloWave Ocean Energy Research Facility. https://doi.org/10.7488/ds/3105.

The depositor was Dr Tom Davey, Senior Experimental Officer in the School of Engineering, who said:

“It is a pleasure for us all in FloWave to see one of our datasets achieve this milestone for Edinburgh DataShare. This is also the tenth DataShare upload making use of experimental outputs from the FloWave Ocean Energy Research Facility. Providing a reliable and accessible repository of our project outputs is not only important for our funders, but also promotes new research collaborations and builds lasting impact for our experimental programmes. This particular project will aid in the understanding measuring wave and currents at deployment sites for offshore renewable energy technologies, and adds to the existing FloWave portfolio of datasets in the field of wave energy, tidal energy, advanced measurement, and remote operated vehicles.”

You can explore more data generated at FloWave in the IES DataShare Collection:

Collection – The Institute for Energy Systems (IES) (ed.ac.uk)

Although the ‘wave buoy in current’ dataset is under temporary embargo, currently set to expire on the 5th of September, it is possible to request the data using DataShare’s request-a-copy feature in the meanwhile. Embargoes may be extended, or lifted early, usually reflecting publication dates.

You might also enjoy this hilarious and very popular video about FloWave:

 

Pauline Ward

Research Data Support Assistant

Library & University Collections

University of Edinburgh

How to DataShare

The latest in our series of Research Data Service ‘how-to’ videos provides guidance and handy hints on making data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) by depositing in Edinburgh DataShare, the University’s open access data repository. This video is aimed at researchers seeking a Digital Object Identifier (or DOI, required by many publishers), wanting to share their data online and/or to archive their data somewhere safe for the long-term. The video demonstrates the DataShare submission interface, while the narration covers the kind of advice and guidance we would typically provide to users when working with them in person or via screen-sharing. Our hope is that users will find this video easier to access and quicker than having to request and schedule a meeting. That said, we’re still available and delighted to talk to users who have more complex questions or requirements about archiving and sharing their data.

Take a look at “How to Archive your Data on Edinburgh DataShare, the Open Research Data Repository” on MediaHopper

Pauline Ward
Research Data Support Assistant
Library and University Collections

A visit from the data jungle: My internship in research data management

This is a guest post from Dr. Tamar Israeli, who completed a work/study internship with the Research Data Support team last Autumn. A link to her report is available below.

Recently, there has been a rumor in Israel that research data should be managed. As a librarian and information specialist working in an academic institution, I decided to check if this was true.

When looking for a place for an internship on the role of the library in research data management (RDM), I was happy to find out that the University of Edinburgh RDM support team has a good reputation. I remember enjoying very much my visit to Edinburgh 30 years ago so I was very happy to get Robin Rice & Martin Donnelly’s kind invitation so I could boldly go where… I had already been before.

During September 2019, I worked with the RDM support team, attended some of the staff meetings and participated in one of the RDM trainings.  As part of my internship we carried out a small scale study. The purpose of the study was mainly to understand what are the barriers that prevent researchers from using tools and services provided to them by the university when collaborating with data.

For that purpose, I interviewed six researchers from different schools and disciplines. The researchers were open and cooperative and the interviews were very interesting and insightful. If you’d like to learn about the way researchers collaborate and what influences their decision to use a particular tool or service, here is a link to our report: http://dx.doi.org/10.7488/era/2

Many thanks to the support team for their invitation and warm hospitality. It was one of the most pleasant months of my life.

Tamar Israeli
Librarian and information specialist
Western Galilee College

Announcing our new “Quick Guides” series

Earlier this week we bid farewell to our intern for the past four weeks, Dr Tamar Israeli from the Western Galilee College Library. Tamar spent her time with us carrying out a small-scale study on the collaborative tools that are available to researchers, which ones they use in their work, and what support they feel they need from the University. One of Tamar’s interviewees expressed a view that “[the University’s tools and services] all start with ‘Data-something’, and I need to close my eyes and think which is for what,” a remark which resonated with my own experience upon first starting this job.

When I joined the University’s Library and University Collections as Research Data Support Manager in Summer 2018, I was initially baffled by the seemingly vast range of different data storage and sharing options available to our researchers. By that point I had already worked at Edinburgh for more than a decade, and in my previous role I had little need or obligation to use institutionally-supported services. Consequently, since I rarely if ever dealt with personal or sensitive information, I tended to rely on freely-available commercial solutions: Dropbox, Google Docs, Evernote – that sort of thing. Finding myself now in a position where I and my colleagues were required to advise researchers on the most appropriate systems for safely storing and sharing their (often sensitive) research data, I set about producing a rough aide memoire for myself, briefly detailing the various options available and highlighting the key differences between them. The goal was to provide a quick means or identifying – or ruling out – particular systems for a given purpose. Researchers might ask questions like: is this system intended for live or archived data? Does it support collaboration (increasingly expected within an ever more interconnected and international research ecosystem)? Is it suitable for storing sensitive data in a way that assures research participants or commercial partners that prying eyes won’t be able to access their personal information without authorisation? (A word to the wise: cloud-based services like Dropbox may not be!)


[click the image for higher resolution version]

Upon showing early versions to colleagues, I was pleasantly surprised that they often expressed an interest in getting a copy of the document, and thought that it might have a wider potential audience within the University. In the months since then, this document has gone through several iterations, and I’m grateful to colleagues with specific expertise in the systems that we in the Research Data Service don’t directly support (such as the Wiki and the Microsoft Office suite of applications) for helping me understand some of the finer details. The intention is for this to be a living document, and if there are any inaccuracies in this (or indeed subsequent) versions, or wording that could be made clearer, just let us know and we’ll update it. It’s probably not perfect (yet!), but my hope is that it will provide enough information for researchers, and those who support them, to narrow down potential options and explore these in greater depth than the single-page table format allows.

With Tamar’s internship finishing up this week, it feels like a timely moment to release the first of our series of “Quick Guides” into the world. Others will follow shortly, on topics including Research Data Protection, FAIR Data and Open Research, and we will create a dedicated Guidance page on the Research Data Service website to provide a more permanent home for these and other useful documents. We will continue to listen to our researchers’ needs and strive to keep our provision aligned with them, so that we are always lowering the barriers to uptake and serving our primary purpose: to enable Edinburgh’s research community to do the best possible job, to the highest possible standards, with the least amount of hassle.

And if there are other Guides that you think might be useful, let us know!

Martin Donnelly
Research Data Support Manager
Library and University Collections