Kyushu University Library and iSchool Visit

Recently, a delegation of 5 librarians visited Library Research Support in Argyle House on 30 July. Led by Emi Ishita, a Professor in the iSchool and working with the Library on their Data-Driven Innovation Initiative, staff from Kyushu and Chiba Universities and the University of the Ryukyus came for a day of discussion, and a pleasant lunch at the nearby Edinburgh College of Art café.

Professor Ishita enjoys an Irn-Bru.

Prof Ishita enjoys an Irn-Bru – Photo credit: Robin Rice

Questions the delegation had were shared in advance, and assigned to members of the team to respond to, in a round table format. These covered research data services and personnel (skills), service operation and collaboration, service evaluation, user reactions, and data publication and licence support in data repositories as well as repository certification. Other questions were around Open Access promotion and educational activities, as well as REF 2029 and Transformative Agreements.

The librarians from Japan were well informed about our research data management and open access services. Something that they were particularly keen to discuss was the way we conduct outreach with researchers, such as going to academic departments and training postgraduate students on data management planning. They are grappling with the perception of libraries in Japan as more of a physical space where researchers choose to come study; less as a proactive service that helps researchers learn and develop new academic skills, particularly related to Research Data Management (RDM).The delegation had also visited University of Vienna and Leeds University on the same trip. Future collaboration around training of librarians in the Kyushu Department of Library Science (iSchool) is being planned with Prof Ishita.

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

 

Skills4EOSC fellowship

This is a guest blog post from Clara Parente Boavida, about her fellowship with the Research Data Service as part of a European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) project.

My name is Clara Parente Boavida and I work in the Research Support Office at Iscte-Instituto Universitario de Lisboa (Portugal). I applied for the first call of the Skills4EOSC Fellowship Programme and between 11th March to 5th April I worked with an amazing team at Research Data Service at the University of Edinburgh.

The Skills4EOSC Fellowship Programme aims to address the need to promote and sustain professional roles dedicated to open research by supporting short-term secondments.

Among the three different types of fellowships, I have chosen a Research Data Support internship. This placement allowed me to actively participate in the day-to-day activities related to research data support, providing an immersive experience and a comprehensive understanding of research data management practices within the host institution.

I would like to congratulate the Skills4EOSC project for this initiative and thank everyone who has helped to make this opportunity possible. I’m grateful for the support of my institution (Vice-Rector Jorge Costa and Carina Cunha), I’m grateful to Robin Rice for the extraordinary welcome and I’m grateful to all the people I’ve had the opportunity to talk to and interact with during this month.

“the essential is invisible to the eyes”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novel “The Little Prince”

Each week’s agenda was carefully prepared with my expectations and interests in mind. The University of Edinburgh has a busy life in terms of Research Data Management. Not only in collaboration with various services within the University, but also with the external community. This holistic view has made me reflect about the different services that Research Data Management intersects with. Success comes from healthy and effective relationships with different stakeholders.

Photo collage of Clara's activities in Edinburgh.

I was involved in the day-to-day activities of different members of the team, and each experience added something new. I had the opportunity to attend face-to-face events, one-to-one meetings, kick-off meetings, as well as online meetings and events. I also took part in internal team meetings and service meetings. Informal activities were carefully planned to allow the Research Data Service team to interact with each other and to allow other teams to be involved.

I had one-to-one meetings with each member of the Research Data Support team about: DataShare, DataVaut, training programme, DMP, DMPonline, Research Data Management Policy and Metrics. I had one-to-one meetings with members of other teams: Open Research, Scholarly Communications, Research Information Systems, Digital Research Services, and Edinburgh Research Office.

I attended a number of events in person: Digital Research Lunchtime Seminar: How to interpret and analyse your data efficiently; Open Research Scotland Meeting; Open Science Framework Workshop Modules 1, 2, 3 & 4; Ethics & Data Management at the Childlight GDF Residency; Technomoral Conversations: Who is Responsible for Responsible AI?; Library Tour for Staff, and Digital Research Lunchtime Seminar: Manage, publish, share and preserve.

I also participated in online events: Updating the DataCite Metadata Scheme webinar; UK Research Network (UKRN) webinar on Indicators for Open Research; UKRN Indicators Pilot 2 online meeting; UKRN Pilot 1 kick-off meeting; Writing a Data management plan, for the Health in Social Science School; and Working with Personal and Sensitive Data. I also had the opportunity to organise an online meeting with Mike Wallis (Research Services, IT Infrastructure) and the IT Services of Iscte to answer questions about DataStore.

In terms of personal contributions, I wrote suggestions for updates to MANTRA Unit 1, part of an open access Research Data Management Training course. I had the opportunity to demonstrate the interoperability process between CRIS systems and OpenAIRE, and also how to link EC funded projects to publications and datasets.

Finally, I designed a Research Data Management Roadmap for the Iscte. This roadmap intends to guide the work to be developed over the next three years towards the implementation of a RDM Service for the Iscte-Instituto Universitário de Lisboa. It incorporates lessons learned during the Skills4EOSC Fellowship Programme at the University of Edinburgh. It is also aligned with the Human Resources Excellence in Research Award (HRS4R) principles for researchers, which is a mechanism through which the European Commission seeks to ensure that concrete steps are put in place by institutions to enhance working conditions for researchers across Europe, as set out in the European Charter and Code.

ERASMUS work placement visitor from Germany

Judith DaehneMy name is Judith Dähne (Daehne). I am the Research Data Support Officer of RheinMain University of Applied Sciences.

When I started to think about research data management (RDM) around 2015, MANTRA   provided my first opportunity learn about RDM and how to handle data correctly. I also discovered DMPonline, delivered by the Digital Curation Centre, and it therefore seemed to me that Edinburgh was somehow the cradle of RDM.

When I heard of the final opportunity to visit the UK with the EU’s ERASMUS programme (it will stop in May 2023) I was keen to apply for a visit with the Research Data Support team of the University of Edinburgh… I am really happy that I landed this wonderful opportunity of a short job shadowing visit.

I attended several meetings and training sessions of the Research Data Service team. I am impressed how much support and aid is provided for the researchers. The infrastructure of storage and exchange like DataStore, DataSync, DataShare, DataVault forms the technical basis of the support.

Even more important, in my opinion, is the personal backing and advice of the data management team.You might just ask your questions by pressing one of the “Contact us” buttons  and there you find email and phone numbers of the research data team at your finger tips.

And the team really takes care over every single dataset that is loaded in DataShare: how to enhance the metadata and how to make it more visible for the scientific community. Not many institutional repositories are curated in such a detailed way – I will take home some precious tips and workflows!

One sticking point, however, is the same as with us: How do we make the services known? How do we reach as many researchers as possible? And how can the transformation to more open science then succeed? Perhaps to just carry on with talking and teaching seems the only way…

3 at lunch table

Robin, Simon and Judith enjoy a working lunch at Howie’s

Research data are a social good and data management supports the verification and replication in science. Ultimately transparency, openness and good data management strengthen the credibility of science and help to counter climate change deniers and conspiracy theorists.  To emphasise this argument, like here in Edinburgh, is also a very important take home message for me.

I would like to thank Robin & her team for sharing their knowledge and their hospitality! I hope we stay in touch.

Guest blog post by Judith Dähne
RheinMain University of Applied Sciences

End of an era – 2017-2020 RDM Roadmap Review (part 1)

Looking back on three years that went into completing our RDM Roadmap in this period of global pandemic and working from home, feels a bit anti-climactic. Nevertheless, the previous three years have been an outstanding period of development for the University’s Research Data Service, and research culture has changed considerably toward openness, with a clearer focus on research integrity. Synergies between ourselves as service providers and researchers seeking RDM support have never been stronger, laying a foundation for potential partnerships in future.

thumbnail image of poster

FAIR Roadmap Review Poster

A complete review was written for the service steering group in October last year (available on the RDM wiki to University members). This was followed by a poster and lightning talk prepared for the FAIR Symposium in December where the aspects of the Roadmap that contributed to FAIR principles of research data (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) were highlighted.

The Roadmap addressed not only FAIR principles but other high level goals such as interoperability, data protection and information security (both related to GDPR), long-term digital preservation, and research integrity and responsibility. The review examined where we had achieved SMART-style objectives and where we fell short, pointing to gaps either in provision or take-up.

Highlights from the Roadmap Review

The 32 high level objectives, each of which could have more than one deliverable, were categorised into five categories. In terms of Unification of the Service there were a number of early wins, including a professionally produced short video introducing the service to new users; a well-designed brochure serving the same purpose; case study interviews with our researchers also in video format – a product of a local Innovation Grant project; and having our service components well represented in the holistic presentation of the Digital Research Services website.

Gaps include the continuing confusion about service components starting with the name ‘Data’___ [Store, Sync, Share, Vault]; the delay of an overarching service level definition covering all components; and the ten-year old Research Data Policy. (The policy is currently being refreshed for consultation – watch this space.)

A number of Data Management Planning goals were in the Roadmap, from increasing uptake, to building capacity for rapid support, to increasing the number of fully costed plans, and ensuring templates in DMPOnline were well tended. This was a mixed success category. Certainly the number of people seeking feedback on plans increased over time and we were able to satisfy all requests and update the University template in DMPOnline. The message on cost recovery in data management plans was amplified by others such as the Research Office and school-based IT support teams, however many research projects are still not passing on RDM costs to the funders as needed.

Not many schools or centres created DMP templates tailored to their own communities yet, with the Roslin Institute being an impressive exception; the large majority of schools still do not mandate a DMP with PhD research proposals, though GeoSciences and the Business School have taken this very seriously. The DMP training our team developed and gave as part of scheduled sessions (now virtually) were well taken up, more by research students than staff. We managed to get software code management into the overall message, as well as the need for data protection impact assessments (DPIAs) for research involving human subjects, though a hurdle is the perceived burden of having to conduct both a DPIA and a DMP for a single research project. A university-wide ethics working group has helped to make linkages to both through approval mechanisms, whilst streamlining approvals with a new tool.

In the category of Working with Active Data, both routine and extraordinary achievements were made, with fewer gaps on stated goals. Infrastructure refreshment has taken place on DataStore, for which cost recovery models have worked well. In some cases institutes have organised hardware purchases through the central service, providing economies of scale. DataSync (OwnCloud) was upgraded. Gitlab was introduced to eventually replace Subversion for code versioning and other aspects of code management. This fit well with Data and Software Carpentry training offered by colleagues within the University to modernise ways of doing coding and cleaning data.

A number of incremental steps toward uptake of electronic notebooks were taken, with RSpace completing its 2-year trial and enterprise subscriptions useful for research groups (not just Labs) being managed by Software Services. Another enterprise tool, protocols.io, was introduced and extended as a trial. EDINA’s Noteable service for Jupyter Notebooks is also showcased.

By far and away the most momentous achievement in this category was bringing into service the University Data Safe Haven to fulfil the innocuous sounding goal of “Provide secure setting for sensitive data and set up controls that meet ISO 27001 compliance and user needs.” An enormous effort from a very small team brought the trusted secure environment for research data to a soft launch at our annual Dealing with Data event in November 2018, with full ISO 27001 standard certification achieved by December 2019. The facility has been approved by a number of external data providers, including NHS bodies. Flexibility has been seen as a primary advantage, with individual builds for each research project, and the ability for projects to define their own ‘gatekeeping’ procedures, depending on their requirements. Achieving complete sustainability on income from research grants however has not proven possible, given the expense and levels of expertise required to run this type of facility. Whether the University is prepared to continue to invest in this facility will likely depend on other options opening up to local researchers such as the new DataLoch, which got its start from government funding in the Edinburgh and South East Scotland region ‘city deal’.

As for gaps in the Working with Data category, there were some expressions of dissatisfaction with pricing models for services offered under cost recovery although our own investigation found them to be competitively priced. We found that researchers working with external partners, especially in countries with different data protection legislation, continue to find it hard work to find easy ways to collaborate with data. Centralised support for databases was never agreed on by the colleges because some already have good local support. Encryption is something that could benefit from a University key management system but researchers are only offered advice and left to their own mechanisms not to lose the keys to their research treasures; the pilot project that colleagues ran in this area was unfortunately not taken forward.

In part 2 of this blog post we will look at the remaining Roadmap categories of Data Stewardship and Research Data Support.

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