New home for Edinburgh Research Data Blog!

Posted on 28 July 2021 by Robin Rice

Tempus fugit. This Data Blog, which has been going since 2013 is now moving to Edinburgh University Libraryblogs. This follows the 2018 organisational merger of the Data Library team at EDINA with Research Data Support in Library & University Collections.

We hope you will actively subscribe to the new blog at https://libraryblogs.is.ed.ac.uk/datablog/ now, by entering your email address in the right navigation panel so you don’t miss any future posts!

Meanwhile we will redirect the old URL and all the older posts to the new site so you won’t have to remember where to go to catch all the news about the Research Data Service and research data management at University of Edinburgh. Any cited posts or bookmarks will continue to resolve.

Otherwise it just remains to thank our former and future hosts – EDINA, and the Digital Library – for providing the platform.

Robin Rice
Data Librarian and Head of Research Data Support
Library and University Collections

Research Data Training: Semester Two, 2020/21

Posted on 17 March 2021 by Kerry Miller

As we are still facing significant restrictions on movement and in-person events during the whole of semester 2 we have decided to continue offering our RDM (Research Data Management) training courses online only. Details of the upcoming courses are below.

For undergraduate and taught masters students we have a new course called Data Mindfulness: Making the most of your dissertation, which can be enroled on via Learn on MyEd. Alternatively the videos and workbook are available on our training page.

Our online, self-paced RDM training course, Research Data MANTRA, has also been undergoing a significant update, which will be the subject of a future blog post – it is openly accessible at https://mantra.edina.ac.uk.

Full details about each course are on our training webpage https://www.ed.ac.uk/information-services/research-support/research-data-service/training

Workshop	Audience	Date	Time	Booking Link
Writing A Data Management Plan for Your Research (RDS002)	Research Staff	24th March 2021	09:30 – 11:30	https://www.events.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?event=book&scheduleId=44117
Writing A Data Management Plan for Your Research (RDS002)	All Staff & PGR’s	13th April 2021	10:00 – 12:00	https://www.events.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?event=book&scheduleID=44862
Working with Personal and Sensitive Data (RDS003)	Research Staff	15th April 2021	09:30 – 11:30	https://www.events.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?event=book&scheduleId=44118
Realising the Benefits of Good Research Data Management (RDS001)	All Staff & PGR’s	21 & 22 April 2021	13:30 – 15:00	Part 1 – https://www.events.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?event=book&scheduleID=44856 Part 2 – ttps://www.events.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?event=book&scheduleID=44861
Edinburgh DataVault: supporting users archiving their research data (RDS008)	Support staff	22nd April 2021	10:30 – 12:00	https://www.events.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?event=showEventDetails&scheduleId=44924
Working with Personal and Sensitive Data (RDS003)	All Staff & PGR’s	26th April 2021	14:00 – 16:00	https://www.events.ed.ac.uk/index.cfm?event=book&scheduleID=44863
Realising the Benefits of Good Research Data Management (RDS001)	Research Staff	04 & 05 May 2021	13:30 – 15:00	Contact IAD directly https://www.ed.ac.uk/institute-academic-development

The following courses will not run during semester 2, but we plan to relaunch them as soon possible. In the meantime if you need any support just get in touch with us via data-support@ed.ac.uk and we’ll be happy to help.

Data Cleaning with OpenRefine (RDS004)
Handling Data Using SPSS (RDS005)
Assessing Disclosure Risk in Quantitative Data (RDS006)
Assessing Data Quality in Quantitative Data (RDS007)
Introduction to Visualising Data in ArcGIS (RDS011)
Introduction to Visualising Data in QGIS (RDS012)

A final note, the Research Data Management and Sharing MOOC which we launched with the University of North Carolina in 2016 has enjoyed its most successful period during the pandemic, with people wanting to reskill for the digital world. Over 2,700 learners have successfully completed the 5 week course and passed assessments, with over 25,000 people engaging with the highly rated course since the beginning.

—

Kerry Miller
Research Data Support Officer
Library and University Collections

‘Protecting sensitive data’: new MANTRA unit now available

Posted on 20 May 2020 by rsander3

The Research Data Support team are pleased to announce a new update to MANTRA, the free and open online research data management training course.

The new ‘Protecting sensitive data’ module has been created from scratch, replacing the previous ‘Data protection, rights and access’ unit to provide an up-to-date guide for researchers working with sensitive and personal data.

MANTRA is designed to give post-graduate students, early career researchers, and information professionals the knowledge and skills needed to work effectively with research data.

The ‘Protecting sensitive data’ unit considers the ethical and legal contexts for conducting research with sensitive data, including information and guidance on:

What makes data sensitive?
What UK and European data protection laws mean for research
Research ethics, informed consent and consent documentation
Approvals processes and accessing restricted data
Safeguarding sensitive data, including data retention limits, access controls and anonymisation
Data protection training

MANTRA is designed to be approachable and informative, and incorporates text and video content plus quizzes, interactive exercises and a ‘further reading’ section.

We hope you find the new content interesting and useful, and we welcome comments on the new unit, as well as feedback on the other seven MANTRA modules.

Finally, the RDS team are currently working on a series of further updates to MANTRA which will be rolled out over the coming weeks, and information about these releases will be posted on this blog and the RDS Twitter account.

Bob Sanders

MANTRA, Lead Editor

Updated MANTRA content: Research data in context

Posted on 16 September 2019 by rsander3

The Research Data Support team is pleased to announce the launch of the first in a series of updates to MANTRA, the free and open online research data management training course.

The first updated module ‘Research data in context’ (previously ‘Research data explained’) is now live on the MANTRA site and provides an introduction to research data, alongside detail on the contexts in which data are generated, and the challenges presented by big data in society.

MANTRA is designed to give post-graduate students, early career researchers, and information professionals the knowledge and skills needed to work effectively with research data.

Since launching in 2011, MANTRA has been through a number of significant rewrites to keep up with current trends, and over 10,000 different learners have visited MANTRA in the last academic year.

The ‘Research data in context’ module has been substantially revised in order to:

remove dated and obsolete content;
simplify and improve the readability of existing material;
add information on data literacy and data science.

The changes in this module include:

Revised pages: Introduction; Why is research data management important?; What are data?; What are research data?; Data as research output; Module Summary; Next & further reading.

New pages: Data in society; Data Science; Video: machine learning; Data literacy and skills.

A change log detailing all changes in this release is available on request from the Research Data Support team (data-support@ed.ac.uk).

We hope you find this update interesting and useful and welcome any feedback you may have.

Further MANTRA updates are forthcoming, focusing on FAIR data and newer data protection legislation and we will announce these in future blog posts.

Bob Sanders
Research Data Support