Dealing with Data 2019 (January 2020): Collaboration Across the Nations

Picture the scene: A cold January day, the wind blowing the scarves of the passers-by through the large windows of the Informatics Forum meeting room. The group inside listens, takes notes, tweets, and asks questions of the speakers, representing a range of disciplines across the University…

Dealing with Data is an annual event hosted by the Research Data Service. Its aim is to engage the University community of researchers and support professionals around a theme, to share success stories and challenges in the myriad, everyday issues involved with data-driven research. The theme this year reflected the difficulty of managing research data in large, collaborative projects. Due to industrial action, the original November event was postponed to January. Around a hundred researchers – staff and students – participated, along with support staff who gave lightning talks about research-focused services. Full presentations and videos are now available.

So Benjamin Bach, our keynote speaker, inspired us with state of the art data visualisation software and techniques for both exploration and presentation. But he also illustrated the difficulties of portraying all of the data in all of its facets of a rich dataset, and the consequences of making necessary choices for its interpretation.
The first session began with Tamar Israeli’s study of researchers’ use of collaborative and institutional tools showed the challenges of making local infrastructure user friendly enough to attract new users familiar with slick cloud-based services. Then Mark Lawson demonstrated his ingenuous ‘ethical hacking’ to piece together a set of APIs to create a research workflow for samples and images for histology research. Minhong Wang conveyed a higher level view of data management focused not just on data-driven, but knowledge-driven phenotyping.

Next were the lively lightning talks, in which Mike Wallis of Research Services warned of a new Digital Dark Age, and David Creighton-Offord spoke of the dillemmas in Information Security user support where shiny doesn’t always equal safe. Lisa Otty spoke of innovative training and text mining projects bringing data science to the Humanities, and Rory MacNeil demonstrated how the RSpace electronic lab notebook can connect to a host of popular open science tools.

Following a lively lunch with chat between delegates and with hosts of the service exhibitions, Alex Hutchison showed a highly programmatic view of data management and ethics control from the UNICEF collaboration, in collecting and analysing real world data about children in need. Caileen Gallagher offered a case study of how food courier data could be used to empower workers. Sanja Badanjak shared her data integration problems of peace agreements around the world, conveying both innovative solutions and time-consuming workarounds.

In the final session Edward Wallace brought in the Edinburgh Carpentries to the rescue of poor data skills within Biological Sciences and the wider University – itself a great example of cross-community collaboration building a community of trainers. Gillian Raab showed us how any data problem however intractable can be solved by resourcefulness and determination, making use of DataShield for multi-party computation when datasets are too sensitive to be shared. Johnny Hay and Tomasz Zielinski demo’d their Plasmo ‘boutique repository’ for plant-systems biology modelling and Holly Tibble described tackling an international collaboration in linking administrative datasets via ‘ridiculously detailed’ statistical analysis plans. Representing the Research Data Service, I wrapped up proceedings with some of these very observations.
Both presentations and videos are available.

Welcome

  • Jeremy Upton, Director of Library and University Collections. [Presentation]

Keynote

  • Data Visualization for Exploration and Presentation, Prof. Benjamin Bach. Lecturer in Design Informatics and Visualization. [Presentation] [Slides]

Session 1 – Chair: Theo Andrew

  • “Data Something”: Assessing Tools, Services and Barriers for Research Data Collaboration at the University of Edinburgh – a small-scale study carried out by Dr Tamar Israeli with support from the Research Data Support team. Robin Rice – Data Librarian & Head of Research Data Support Services. [Presentation] [Slides]
  • Integrated secure web application to deliver centralised management of research samples, histology services and imaging data. Mark Lawson, Data & Project Manager, MRC Centre for Reproductive Health, QMRI. [Presentation] [Slides]
  • Building the Knowledge Graph for UK Health Data Science Minhong Wang et. al, Deanery of Molecular, Genetic and Population Health Sciences. [Presentation] [Slides]

Session 2 – Chair: Kerry Miller

  • The Data Opportunities & Challenges when Collaborating across Organisations
    Alex Hutchison, Delivery Director – Data for Children Collaborative with UNICEF. [Presentation] [Slides]
  • Restoring Gig Workers to Power: Personal Data Portability, Supply of Digital Content and Free Flow of Data in the European Data Economy. Cailean Gallagher, Scottish Trades Union Congress, & St Andrews University Institute of Intellectual History. [Presentation] [Slides]
  • Dealing with data in peace and conflict research. Sanja Badanjak, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, School of Law. [Presentation] [Slides]

Session 3 – Chair: Robin Rice

  • Bringing researchers to data: computing skills training with Edinburgh Carpentries.
    Edward Wallace, Sir Henry Dale Fellow, Institute of Cell Biology. [Presentation] [Slides]
  • Running an analysis of combined data when the individual records cannot be combined. Gillian M Raab and Chris Dibben, Scottish centre for Administrative Data Research. [Presentation] [Slides]
  • The grant is dead, long live the data. Johnny Hay and Tomasz Zieliński, School of Biology, University of Edinburgh. [Presentation] [Slides]
  • International collaborations using linked administrative data: Lessons from the MARIC study. Holly Tibble, Usher Institute, University of Edinburgh. [Presentation] [Slides]

Robin Rice
Data Librarian and Head, Research Data Support
Library & University Collections

Dealing with Data 2019 – Registration now open!

Collaboration Across the Nations: Managing, sharing and securing research data across space and time

UPDATE – DwD 2019 Postponed

Due to the strike action which is scheduled to happen on the 27th of November we have decided to postpone DwD2019. This was not a decision we took lightly but we felt it was for the best as we did not wish to put anyone in the uncomfortable position of feeling they had to either cross the picket line or not attend DwD2019. DwD2019 has been provisionally rebooked for the 15th of January 2020, any resulting changes to the programme or other details will be added here as and when they are confirmed.

Dealing with Data 2019 will take place from 09:30 – 16:15 on the 15th January 2020 in the Informatics Forum. This year our theme is “Collaboration Across the Nations: Managing, sharing and securing research data across space and time” and we are now inviting all staff and post-graduate students at the University of Edinburgh to register for this event.

Collaboration is vitally important to academic and commercial research in all areas as it enables the pooling of resources to answer increasingly complex, or interdisciplinary research questions.

The effective collection, processing, and sharing of research data is integral to successful collaborations, but it can also present many challenges. In particular the practicalities of co-ordinating data management across large multi-centre collaborations, sharing large data, or handling sensitive data, can present difficulties if not planned for appropriately.

Dealing with Data 2019 is your opportunity to hear from, and network with, other members of the UoE research community about how they have addressed these issues to build successful collaborations, or the lessons they have learned which will enable them to be more successful in the future.

In previous years DwD has attracted over 100 attendees from across the university to hear contributions by research staff and students at all stages of their careers and from diverse disciplines. You can view the presentations from 2017 & 2018 now on MediaHopper (https://media.ed.ac.uk/channel/Dealing+With+Data+2017+Conference/82256222)

Conference Programme – Dealing_with_Data_2019_Programme_V1.2

If you have any questions please get in touch using  dealing-with-data-conference@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk

Dealing with Data is an annual event sponsored and organised by the Research Data Service to provide a forum for University of Edinburgh researchers to discuss how they are benefiting from, or experiencing struggles with, the fast-changing research data environment.

Kerry Miller

Research Data Support Officer

Dealing with Data 2019- Call for Contributions *Deadline Extended*

*We have had several requests for an extension to the submission deadline, so, we have decided to extend it until 12 noon on Friday 11th October!*

Dealing with Data 2019 will take place on the 27th of November in the Informatics Forum. This year our theme is “Collaboration Across the Nations: Managing, sharing and securing research data across space and time” and we are now inviting contributions from research staff and students at the University of Edinburgh.

In previous years DwD has attracted over 100 attendees from across the university to hear contributions by research staff and students at all stages of their careers and from diverse disciplines. You can view the presentations from 2017 & 2018 now on MediaHopper (https://media.ed.ac.uk/channel/Dealing+With+Data+2017+Conference/82256222)

The full Call for Contributions is below. If you have any questions please get in touch using on dealing-with-data-conference@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk

Dealing with Data Conference 2019 – Call for Contributions

Date:                     Wednesday 27th November 2019

Location:             Informatics Forum, George Square, Central Area

Theme:                Collaboration Across the Nations: Managing, sharing and securing research data across space and time

Possible Contributions: Presentation; Lightning talk; Poster; Demonstration of a tool or method supporting collaboration; Stall or exhibit, panel.

Call for contributions:

Collaboration is vitally important to academic and commercial research in all areas as it enables the pooling of resources to answer increasingly complex, or interdisciplinary research questions.

The effective collection, processing, and sharing of research data is integral to successful collaborations, but it can also present many challenges. In particular the practicalities of co-ordinating data management across large multi-centre collaborations, sharing large data, or handling sensitive data, can present difficulties if not planned for appropriately.

Dealing with Data 2019 is your opportunity to share with the UoE research community how you have addressed these issues to build successful collaborations, or the lessons you have learned which will enable you to be more successful in the future.

Contributions should be aimed principally at an academic audience, but the programme will seek to represent a wide range of scholarly disciplines.

Possible themes may include (but are by no means limited to):

  • Data sharing within research groups or labs;
  • Challenges of data sharing across the University or with external partners;
  • Managing and securing sensitive data across distributed research projects;
  • Interdisciplinary issues;
  • Tools for enabling or simplifying collaborative data collection, management or analysis;
  • Data sharing at scale;
  • Interoperability of (meta)data;
  • Legal and licensing issues;
  • Credit and contributions for data use and reuse, including after a project has ended.

For all contributions please send an abstract detailing the content and proposed format (maximum 500 words) to dealing-with-data-conference@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk by Friday 11th october.  Posters should be A0 in size, portrait orientation.

Proposals will be reviewed, and the event programme announced by Friday 25th October 2019.

Dealing with Data is an annual event sponsored and organised by the Research Data Service to provide a forum for University of Edinburgh researchers to discuss how they are benefiting from, or experiencing struggles with, the fast-changing research data environment.

Kerry Miller

Research Data Support Officer

DwD2018 – Videos now on Media Hopper

Dealing with Data 2018 was once again a great success in November last year with over 100 university staff and Post-Graduate students joining us to hear presentations on topics as diverse as sharing data in clinical trials and embedding sound files in linguistics research papers.

As promised the videos of each presentation have now been made publicly available on Media Hopper (https://media.ed.ac.uk/channel/Dealing%2BWith%2BData%2BConference/82256222), while the PDFs can be found on https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/25859. You can also read Martin Donnelly’s reflections on the day https://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/2018/11/28/dealing-with-data-2018-summary-reflections/.

We hope that these will prove both useful and interesting to all of our colleagues who were unable to attend.

We look forward to seeing you at Dealing with Data 2019.