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June 18, 2026
Thinking about Research Data Asset Registers
In my last blog post, I looked at the four quadrants of research data curation systems. This categorised systems that manage or describe research data assets by whether their primary role is to store metadata or data, and whether the information is for private or public use. Four systems were then put into these quadrants.
The University of Edinburgh already has two active services from this diagram: PURE our Current Research Information System, and DataShare our open data repository.
This blog post will start to unpack some of the requirements for a Data Asset Register.
The first aspect to cover is its name. What should it be called? Traditionally systems like this, which only hold metadata records that either just describe, or describe and point to other resources, are known as registers, catalogues, directories, indexes, or inventories.
The University already has a ‘Data Catalogue’, maintained by the Data Library. However this list has a different purpose, to hold details of external data. Oxford University, instead of opting for a name such as this, have instead opted to call their service by the verb ‘find’ – DataFinder. Whilst there may be some brand or service name applied to the system we create at the University of Edinburgh, for now its working title is ‘Data Asset Register’ as one of its main functions will be to allow data creators to ‘register’ their data assets by describing them, and if the data is published online to link to the data.
But what should the Data Asset Register provide? The following diagram shows some early thoughts:
The diagram splits this up into three broad areas:
- Description – what the asset register should describe
- Functions – the functions needed to allow data asset description
- Services – the value-added services that will add benefit to people who register their data
Description
The core purpose of the system is to describe data. This is split into two categories: being able to describe single items or data assets, and describing collections of data assets. Many data assets are created on their own, for example a population health longitudinal study. As such, this should be described on its own. In contrast, some data are created in large sets, where it isn’t necessarily useful to describe every part of that set on its own. In this case, the collection as a whole can be described. A good example of this is the Research Data Australia service from the Australian National Data Service.
We’ll need to decide how to describe the data. A likely initial candidate will be the DataCite Metadata Schema, but we may find this needs to be extended to cover extra elements relevant to the University or the discipline of the data asset being described. There will also be requirements coming from a possible UK research data registry development of which is being led by the Digital Curation Centre.
Functions
In order to enable data asset description, a register will need certain functions. So far three have been identified:
- CRUD: Create / Read / Update / Delete are the basic functions required when manipulating data. The system should allow records of research data to be created, read later, updated, and if needed, deleted.
- User Interface (UI): In order to enable CRUD functionality, a user interface will be required. To be useful, this will need to provide search and display functionality, for example using faceted search and browse.
- Log: Some funders have requirements to keep data for certain lengths of time, or for periods of time that must be reset each time a data set is accessed. For this reason each access of a data asset must be logged by the system. An example is from the EPSRC:
“Research organisations will ensure that EPSRC-funded research data is securely preserved for a minimum of 10-years from the date that any researcher ‘privileged access’ period expires or, if others have accessed the data, from last date on which access to the data was requested by a third party;”
It may also be that the Data Asset Register can be a front-end for our Data Vault too – more about that in another blog post!
Services
Extra value-added services are required in order to make the Data Asset Register useful to people. Our initial thoughts about these services include the following:
- Identify: The ability to assign identifiers to data assets. Some of these identifiers will need to be persistent.
- DOI: DataCite DOIs allow DOIs to be assigned to data assets, in the same way that DOIs are assigned to journal articles. This allows them to be persistently identified over time even if they move between systems, but also allow them to be cited using a well-known identifier.
- TinyURL: A short URL such as those provided by TinyURL or bitly are useful to give easy web identifiers to objects. For example it might be nice to be able to issue URLs such as http://data.ed.ac.uk/abcd.
- Other: Are there any other identifier systems that we should consider using?
- Discover: It is important that the data records held in the Data Asset Register are searchable and can be indexed by external services. This may be by national, international, or discipline-based data aggregators, or by normal web search engines.
- Share: Whilst often the data assets will be described online but kept offline by the researcher, they may wish to share the data. The Data Asset Register may need to facilitate this in a number of ways:
- Deposit: If the data is held in the Data Vault, along with a description in the Data Asset Register, then using a deposit protocol such as SWORD it would be possible to deposit the data into the institutional data repository, or into an external repository. The Data Asset Register can then record the identifier for the hosted data set.
- Redirect: Where the data is hosted online elsewhere, the Data Asset Register could automatically redirect users. For example visiting http://data.ed.ac.uk/abcd could redirect a visitor directly to the repository, rather than showing them just the data asset record description. If the data is not shared openly, then contact details can be provided of the data owner.
- RCUK: Some funders, such as the RCUK members (Research Councils UK) require funded journal papers to include “a statement on how the underlying research materials – such as data, samples or models – can be accessed”. The data asset register could facilitate this by automatically writing statements such as “Details about accessing the data referenced in this paper may be found at http://data.ed.ac.uk/abcd”
It is very early days in our thinking about what features a Data Asset Register should offer, and like many components of a modern research data management infrastructure, there are very few existing examples to look at. Our thoughts will be refined over the coming months so that we can start looking at implementation options. Is there an existing system that can do all of this for us, or is it better to build something new, either alone or with a collaborators?
Images available from http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.873617
The Story of One
In 1932 and 1947, every 11 year old child in Scotland was given an intelligence test*. This fact is referred to throughout the blog. Its the reason Thomson was famous (he designed the test), it was unique (no equivalent exists anywhere else in the world), and it was done on a huge scale (87, 498 children were tested in the first Scottish Mental Survey, and 70,805 in the second).
For over a decade, Professor Ian Deary and his team have used the results of the tests in Lothian Birth Cohorts 1921 and 1936 to explore why some individuals’ cognitive abilities decline more than others – vital and far reaching research in an increasingly ageing population. Hundreds of people given the intelligence test as a child have participated in the follow on studies, which have explored their cognitive skills, their physical well being, and their lives.
At the very heart of all this data are the people themselves, and what the numbers given in the beautifully neat test ledgers don’t tell us. Deary and his colleagues have previously secured funding for author Ann Lingard to tell the Lothian Birth Cohort’s stories through words, artist Fionna Carlisle through paint, and photographer Linda Kosciewicz-Fleming through the lens.
One individual who participated in the 1932 survey, but who was unable to tell his story, was Deary’s Uncle, Richard Deary.
Richard Deary, courtesy of Professor Ian Deary
Richard Deary was the son of a miner, and lived with his parents and five siblings
in a one-bedroom miners’ terraced cottage. The family had the most basic of education – Richard would leave school at the age of 14. He, like the thousands of other school pupils who sat the test, was never told his results. He probably never gave them a second thought, and went on to become a miner like his Father. His IQ was an impressive 120.
As an adult, Richard found himself in the midst of World War II:
The last letter from Richard Deary to his parents before his death, courtesy of Professor Ian Deary
In the last letter he sent to his parents, he tries to alleviate his parent’s worry, and informs them about a new fangled thing called ‘air graphs’. Two acts of kindness universal from children to their parents the world over. He ends the letter with a ‘cheerio’, and signs ‘your loving son’. Richard died aged 21 when his submarine struck a mine in the Mediterranean Sea 2 months later.
On lecturing at the McEwan Hall on the centenary of the psychology department in November 2006, Deary was presented with this rather wonderful poem by poet Michael Davenport, scribed as he listened to Richard’s story:
A PORTRAIT BY NUMBERS
27.10.2006: a psychologist speaks
of intelligence quotients, cognitive differences,
the Scottish Mental Survey 1932.
Using Powerpoint he illustrates,
shows details from a ledger of the time.
He highlights one boy, Richard,
born 4.4.1921:
number 4 in a class list,
IQ 120 on the Moray House Test.
2.8.1942: Richard’s letter
describes his submarine the ‘Talisman’.
He asks his parents not to worry
if they do not often hear from him
and finishes: ‘Your Loving Son.’
10.9.1942: the ‘Talisman’
leaves Gibraltar reports
a U-boat 5 days later.
18.9.1942: Richard dies at sea,
presumed mined off Sicily.
He’s 21, his navy number:
30938
His nephew, the psychologist, describes
follow-ups of 1930’s survey scores:
correlations with rank and fate in war;
effects of illness, ageing, on the mental skills
of those who still live on.
And with a quiet love
he has included Richard
in this journey of discovery,
his numbers, dates, transmuted
into an elegy.
Michael Davenport
That both history and science are fundamentally about people becomes obvious when looking at a story like Richard’s – or any of the cohorts who shared their lives with Deary and his team. Their stories may not be unusual, but they are all unique, and they allow us to gain some understanding of the humanity behind the numbers – vital if the significance of history and science are to be conveyed to those of us who don’t know much about either!
Every effort has been made to contact Michael Davenport before reproducing his poetry. If there are any objections to this being re-produced in whole or in part, contact Project Archivist, Emma Anthony (Emma.Anthony@ed.ac.uk) who will remove it from the blog.
Hydra, SPSS journal, publishes second issue
Hydra, the postgraduate journal for the School of Social and Political Science has published its second issue on the University’s Journal Hosting Platform.
Hydra’s mission is to strengthen dialogue in SSPS by drawing attention to the excellent postgraduate work going on in the School. The articles in this second issue address a variety of topics, but they do so in a way that is accessible and engaging for a non-specialist audience.
Jacque Clinton begins the issue by examining how historical institutionalism and path dependency have influenced the development of healthcare policy in the UK and US. Nida Sattar follows this with a deconstruction of the complexities of citizenship, focusing on the multi-layered situation faced by the “rejected Biharis” of South Asia.
The final four articles all engage with issues around international aid and development; Katharine Heus critiques the construction of evidence of aid effectiveness in global health interventions, while Megan Wanless examines the World Bank’s approach to dealing with corruption. Katherine Allen interrogates the M-PESA money transfer initiative in Kenya, and Serena Suen rounds off this issue of Hydra by questioning accepted wisdom about the role of women’s education in global development initiatives.
Hydra is a student publication supported by the graduate school. We hope Hydra, like its namesake, will endure and regenerate for years to come.
Welcome to the new Research Data Management Service Coordinator: Kerry Miller
We have great pleasure in welcoming a new member of staff to the research data management programme. Kerry Miller has joined us in the role of Research Data Management Service Coordinator.
Kerry is featured in the latest BITS magazine, sharing details of her new role:
What’s your background?
I’ve undertaken research for various organisations, in industry and charity sectors –
including what is now GlaxoSmithKline and Cancer Research UK as well as the
Ministry of Defence and the British Council. I then joined the Digital Curation
Centre (DCC) in 2011 as an Institutional Support Officer. This involved working
with Higher Education institutions across the UK to help them improve their
Research Data Management policy and practice, in response to Research
Councils UK and other similar requirements.
Tell us about the new position.
My new post, RDM Service Co-ordinator, is a newly-created post, aiming to
bring together and co-ordinate all the different aspects of the research data
management work that’s currently being undertaken throughout the University: lots of
infrastructure improvements, and new tools and support for researchers. There
are things like DataShare, which has been active for a while now, but which we’re
promoting, so more researchers are aware of it and know when to use it. There
are also a few more services that are still in the design phases. You can read all
about the RDM work that is going on via the RDM Blog: datablog.is.ed.ac.uk
What particularly excites you about the new role?
The work we do at the DCC is in many ways quite theoretical; we go out and talk
to institutions about what they ought to be doing, what they need to do to meet
requirements, and that sort of thing, but this new role will be going from talking
the talk to walking the walk; I’ve got to actually do what I’ve been telling people at
other institutions to do! It’s quite scary but also quite exciting; just to see whether
or not I can actually turn that into a real, successful service.
Where exactly will you be based?
I’m within the Research and Learning Section of Library & University Collections, on the lower ground floor of the Main Library. There is a huge number of people involved in the area, but the RDM team itself is small and there aren’t that many people full-time at the moment. RDM is part of a lot of people’s jobs – people like Stuart Lewis and John Scally from the library side, Tony Weir in IT Infrastructure and Robin Rice in the Data Library, but I’ll be one of the few people for whom it’s a full-time, dedicated role.
What do you enjoy doing outside work?
I watch a lot of films, and do a lot of cooking and baking. I’ve been doing a recipe
a week from The Great British Bake Off, with greater or lesser success. I often use
my office colleagues as a waste disposal system!
New staff member: Kerry Miller
Library & University Collections has great pleasure in welcoming a new member of staff to its ranks. Kerry Miller has joined us in the role of Research Data Management Service Coordinator.
Kerry is featured in the latest BITS magazine, sharing details of her new role:
What’s your background?
I’ve undertaken research for various organisations, in industry and charity sectors –
including what is now GlaxoSmithKline and Cancer Research UK as well as the
Ministry of Defence and the British Council. I then joined the Digital Curation
Centre (DCC) in 2011 as an Institutional Support Officer. This involved working
with Higher Education institutions across the UK to help them improve their
Research Data Management policy and practice, in response to Research
Councils UK and other similar requirements.
Tell us about the new position.
My new post, RDM Service Co-ordinator, is a newly-created post, aiming to
bring together and co-ordinate all the different aspects of the research data
management work that’s currently being undertaken throughout the University: lots of
infrastructure improvements, and new tools and support for researchers. There
are things like DataShare, which has been active for a while now, but which we’re
promoting, so more researchers are aware of it and know when to use it. There
are also a few more services that are still in the design phases. You can read all
about the RDM work that is going on via the RDM Blog: datablog.is.ed.ac.uk
What particularly excites you about the new role?
The work we do at the DCC is in many ways quite theoretical; we go out and talk
to institutions about what they ought to be doing, what they need to do to meet
requirements, and that sort of thing, but this new role will be going from talking
the talk to walking the walk; I’ve got to actually do what I’ve been telling people at
other institutions to do! It’s quite scary but also quite exciting; just to see whether
or not I can actually turn that into a real, successful service.
Where exactly will you be based?
I’m within the Research and Learning Section of Library & University Collections, on the lower ground floor of the Main Library. There is a huge number of people involved in the area, but the RDM team itself is small and there aren’t that many people full-time at the moment. RDM is part of a lot of people’s jobs – people like Stuart Lewis and John Scally from the library side, Tony Weir in IT Infrastructure and Robin Rice in the Data Library, but I’ll be one of the few people for whom it’s a full-time, dedicated role.
What do you enjoy doing outside work?
I watch a lot of films, and do a lot of cooking and baking. I’ve been doing a recipe
a week from The Great British Bake Off, with greater or lesser success. I often use
my office colleagues as a waste disposal system!
CENSORED!
Last week I was sent a wonderful book, Deletrix – a collaboration between the artist Joan Fontcuberta, Catalan PEN and Arts Santa Mònica and it explores censorship and violence done to books. Thought provoking, and beautifully illustrated with images that have a strange haunting quality- indeed Fontcuberta challenges the audience as to whether the inherent beauty of the object can redeem the violence done to them. It has got me thinking about the items in our collections that have suffered changes at the hands of censors over the years.
Perhaps the one that immediately springs to mind is Micheal Servetus’ Christianismi Restitutio http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/tv7257. It is thought to be the copy Servetus sent to Calvin; incensed by Servetus’ theories, Calvin ripped out the first 16 pages before he set the wheels in motion to have Servetus burned at the stake using his own books for the fire! (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Servetus for more information).
However, there are many more censored images in the collection, often the result of religious belief & moral concerns. All the illustrations in the Genesis chapter of this French Bible appear to have God covered with Gold paint http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/q28182
And there are many examples of people being defaced http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/ir0qfd
Further examples can be found below
http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/75ig3v – perhaps an example of Victorian vandalism?
Or how about this one, where it looks as though the owners name and anathema has been deliberately erased http://images.is.ed.ac.uk/luna/servlet/s/55b726
More information on Deletrix can be found at the links below
http://nathaliepariente.wordpress.com/2012/11/05/nouvelle-exposition-joan-fontcuberta-deletrix/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pencatala/sets/72157635582961896/with/10022317404/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr_AP8dK18w&feature=youtu.be
Many thanks to Ana González Tornero for the beautiful book, the links and information about the Deletrix Project.
Susan Pettigrew
BAG: The Student Magazine
Exciting morning so far! We’ve been sorting through prints and posters for the ECA collections and found something interesting…
Earlier in the year we posted a story in the archives about BAG, the concept for a joint art colleges student magazine between Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee in 1970. The magazine was to be called BAG and it would be sold in a polythene bag.
Well we found the prototype ‘BAG’ this morning! And here it is…
We think this is the only one created. The idea was that the contents would be unbound. This prototype contains poetry, illustrations and comment.
Anyone remember talk of BAG at ECA in 1970? If so let us know!
New research data storage
The latest BITS magazine for University of Edinburgh staff (Issue 8, Autumn/ Winter 2013) contains a lead article on new data storage facilities that Information Services have recently procured and will be making available to researchers for their research data management.
“The arrival of the RDM storage and its imminent roll out is an exciting step in the development of our new set of services under the Research Data Management banner. Ensuring that the service we deploy is fair, useful and t transparent are key principles for the IS team.” John Scally
Information Services is very pleased to announce that our new Research Data Storage hardware has been safely delivered.
Following a competitive procurement process, a range of suppliers were selected to provide the various parts of the infrastructure, incl. Dell, NetApp, Brocade and Cisco. The bulk of the order was assembled over the summer in China and shipped to the King’s Buildings campus at the end of August. Since then IT Infrastructure staff have been installing, testing and preparing the storage for roll-out.
How good is the storage?
Information Services recognises the importance of the University’s research data and has procured enterprise-class storage infrastructure to underpin the programme of Research
Data services. The infrastructure ranges from the highest class of flash-storage (delivering 375,000 IO operations per second) to 1.6PB (1 Petabyte = 1,024 Terabytes) of bulk storage arrays. The data in the Research Data Management (RDM) file-store is automatically replicated to an off-site disaster facility and also backed up with a 60-day retention period, with 10 days of file history visible online.
Who qualifies for an allocation?
Every active researcher in the University! This is an agreement between the University and the researcher to provide quality active data storage, service support and long term curation for researchers. This is for all researchers, not just Principal Investigators or those in receipt of external grants to fund research.
When do I get my allocation?
We are planning to roll out to early adopter Schools and institutes late November this year. This is dependent on all of the quality checks and performance testing on the system being completed successfully, however, confidence is high that the deadline will be met.
The early adopters for the initial service roll-out are: School of GeoSciences, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences, and the Centre for Population Health
Sciences. Phased roll-out to all areas of the University will follow.
How much free allocation will I receive?
The University has committed 0.5TB (500GB) of high quality storage with guaranteed backup and resilience to every active researcher. The important principle at work is that the 0.5TB is for the individual researcher to use primarily to store their active research data. This ensures that they can work in a high quality and resilient environment and, hopefully, move valuable data from potentially unstable local drives. Research groups
and Schools will be encouraged to pool their allocations in order to facilitate shared data management and collaboration.
This formula was developed in close consultation with College and School representatives; however, there will be discipline differences in how much storage is required and individual need will not be uniform. A degree of flexibility will be built into the
allocation model and roll-out, though if researchers go over their 0.5TB free allocation they will have to pay.
Why is the University doing this?
The storage roll-out is one component of a suite of existing and planned services known as our Research Data Management Initiative. An awareness raising campaign accompanies the storage allocation to Schools, units and individuals to
encourage best practice in research data management planning and sharing.
Research Data Management support services:
www.ed.ac.uk/is/data-management
University’s Research Data Management Policy:
www.ed.ac.uk/is/research-data-policy
BITS magazine (Issue 8, Autumn/ Winter 2013)
http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/information-services/about/news/edinburgh-bits
The New College Strong Room revealed
A guest post from our Museums Studies student volunteers, Charlotte Johnson and Liz Louis.
We are two postgraduate students studying for an MLitt in Museum and Gallery Studies at the University of St Andrews. As part of our course we’re undertaking a practical placement and as such we are very pleased to be working on a project here at New College, in the strong room. When we started, we didn’t know what sort of collection to expect, and we quickly realised that the sheer variety of objects we discovered, would send us on a whistle-stop tour of New College’s history and give us insights into the lives and relationships of the eminent Doctors of Divinity who served here. It is our task to document, research and properly store the collection and we have come across some fabulous items over the last 6 weeks.
Perhaps one of our favourites is a casket and scroll presented to the Rev. John Sinclair McPhail by his parishioners on Skye, on his having served 50 years in the clergy. It is a beautiful piece of craftsmanship, with wood, silver, purple velvet, raspberry-coloured silk and a hand-painted declaration of their appreciation.
Another interesting piece is a large silver fob-watch which belonged to Thomas Chalmers, one of the leaders of the Disruption which led to the creation of the Free Church of Scotland and first principal of New College; it looks as though it was much used and much loved.
At this point, we don’t know much about any of the items, but each one of them has a story to tell, and our conservation and research efforts will make sure that they don’t stay silent. We wanted to take this opportunity to share some photographs of these treasures with you.
Clerk Ranken
Clerk Ranken was born in 1880, Edinburgh. Educated at George Heriot’s School, he then went to Edinburgh University, graduating BSc (Pure Science) in 1902, then DSc in 1907. He was recipient of both the Hope Prize and Mackay Smith Scholarships. At the age of only 21 he read a paper before the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
As a Carnegie Fellow, he worked with Georg Bredig at Heidelberg University. On his return from Germany he became lecturer in Chemistry at the Heriot-Watt College, Edinburgh, and later Assistant Professor in Chemistry. In 1917 he left academia to take up as post with Messrs. T. & J. Bernard, Ltd., the Edinburgh brewers.
We recently became aware, thanks to Dr. Andrew Alexander (Chemistry) that two photographs we had labelled as “Dr. Rubens?” are actually of Ranken and taken (most likely) during his student days.
Chemistry students c1905
The first is a group photograph and we assume it is a group of Chemistry students. The doorway has been identified as one of those leading into the Reid Concert Hall (adjacent to the Medical School, where Chemistry was based). Clerk Ranken is in the front row, furthest left.
Clerk Ranken in Chemistry laboratory
The second shows Ranken in a laboratory. In 1903 the number of Chemistry laboratories had been increased and, although we have yet to place this specifically, it is of a similar style to laboratories known to be known in the Medical School building.
Clerk Ranken died in May 1936. An obituary can be found in the Journal of the Institute of Brewing, Volume 42, Issue 4.
Collections
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Projects
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