Category Archives: News and publications

Dealing with Data Conference & RDM Service Launch – summary

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University of Edinburgh Research Data Management Service LogoInformation Services (IS) held a half-day conference in the Main Library on the subject of ‘Dealing with Data’ to coincide with the launch of the University of Edinburgh’s Research Data Management support services on 26 August.

University researchers presented to over 120 delegates from across the disciplinary and support spectrum on many aspects of working with data, particularly research with novel methods of creating, using, storing, or sharing data. Subjects included Big Data for disease control, managing West Nilotic language sound files, sharing brain images, geospatial metadata services, visualising qualitative data via carpets!

Dealing with Data Conference

The RDM Programme team are currently collecting feedback and will report on this and the conference in more detail via this blog.

‘Dealing with Data Conference’ delegates then gathered in the Main Library foyer to hear brief talks by Professor Jeff Haywood, Professor Peter Clarke and Dr John Scally followed by the formal launch of the RDM Services by the University’s Principal, Sir Timothy O’Shea who underlined the successful collaboration between research and support service communities in establishing research support services worthy of a leading UK research-intensive university.

University of Edinburgh RDM Service launch by Sir Timothy O'Shea

A ‘storify’ story of tweets collected during the launch and the conference is available, with pictures and perspectives from various attendees.

The launch of the IS-led RDM Services is the culmination of work detailed in the RDM Roadmap which began in earnest in August 2012 following approval of the RDM Policy by the University Court in May 2011.

Details of available and planned RDM Services for University of Edinburgh researchers were reported on in the blogpost: RDM Roadmap: Completion of Phase 1

Conference presentations can be downloaded from Edinburgh Research Archive (ERA) at: https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/9389

Stuart Macdonald
RDM Service Coordinator
stuart.macdonald@ed.ac.uk

Welcome to the new Research Data Management Service Coordinator: Stuart Macdonald

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We welcome Stuart Macdonald to the position of Research Data Management Service Coordinator, as a 1-year secondment for the current post-holder. Stuart will continue the work of developing the research data services provided by Information Services at the University of Edinburgh. Stuart will be working for three quarters of his time on the programme, and the remaining quarter in his current role as Associate Data Librarian for EDINA and the Data Library.

Stuart Macdonald

Stuart has recently returned from a six month secondment at Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research as Data Services Librarian where he co-ordinated the successful Data Seal of Approval trusted repository application for CISER Data Archive as well as modernized archival process and practice.

When not working as service coordinator, Stuart will be working towards gaining the Data Seal of Approval for DataShare, the University’s open data repository.

On the role of service coordinator, Stuart says “This is a marvellous opportunity to be at the heart of research data management activities here at the University and to continue the great work that has already been put in place”

Dealing with Data – Call For Papers

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University of Edinburgh Logo

Dealing with Data Conference 2014
Call for Papers

Date:

Tuesday 26th August 2014, 9am – 1pm
Including a formal launch of the University Research Data Management services by the Principal at 11:30am

Location:

University of Edinburgh (room to be confirmed)

Themes:

Data creation
Data management planning
Data visualisation
Data archiving and sharing
Open Data
Data re-use
Electronic lab books
Data preservation
Software preservation
Non-traditional data types
Data analysis
New requirements for Research Data Management
Data infrastructure
Linked Data

Format:

Presentations will be 20 minutes long, with 10 minutes for questions. Depending on numbers, thematic parallel strands may be used.  Presentations to be aimed at an academic audience, but from a wide range of disciplines.

Call for papers:

A half day conference on the subject of ‘Dealing with Data’ is being run to coincide with the launch of the University of Edinburgh’s Research Data Management services that consists of tools and support to deal with the whole lifecycle of research data, from planning and storage, to sharing and archiving.

The conference invites proposals for presentations from University of Edinburgh researchers on any aspect of the challenges and advances in working with data, particularly research data with novel methods of creating, using, storing, visualising or sharing data.  A list of themes is given above, although proposals that cover any aspect of working with research data are welcome.

Please send proposals (2 sides of A4 max) to Stuart Lewis (stuart.lewis@ed.ac.uk) before Friday 25th July 2014.  Papers will be reviewed and the programme compiled by the 8th August. A PDF version of this Call for Papers is available for printing: DealingwithDataConference2014-cfp

Using an electronic lab notebook to deposit data into Edinburgh DataShare

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This is heads up about a ‘coming attraction’.  For the past several months a group at Research Space has been working with the DataShare team, including Robin Rice and George Hamilton, to make it possible to deposit research data from our new RSpace electronic notebook into DataShare.

I gave the first public preview of this integration last month in a presentation called Electronic lab notebooks and data repositories:  Complementary responses to the scientific data problem  to a session on Research Data and Electronic Lab Notebooks at the American Chemical Society conference in Dallas.

When the RSpace ELN becomes available to researchers at Edinburgh later this spring, users of RSpace will be able to make deposits to DataShare directly from RSpace using a simple interface we have built into RSpace.  The whole process only takes a few clicks, and starts with selecting records to be deposited into DataShare and clicking on the DataShare button as illustrated in the following screenshot:b2_workspaceHighlightedYou are then asked to enter some information about the deposit:

c2_datashareDialogFilledAfter confirming a few details about the deposit, the data is deposited directly into DataShare, and information about the deposit appears in DataShare.

h2_viewInDatashare2We will provide details about how to sign up for an RSpace account in a future post later in the spring.  In the meantime, I’d like to thank Robin and George for working with us at RSpace on this exciting project.  As far as we know this is the first time an electronic lab notebook has ever been integrated with an institutional data repository, so this is a pioneering and very exciting experiment!  We hope to use it as a model for similar integrations with other institutional and domain-specific repositories.

Rory MacNeil
Chief Executive, Research Space