During the last decade, national and international attention has been increasingly focused on issues of research data management and access to publicly funded research data. The pressure brought to bear on researchers to improve their data management and data sharing practice has come from research funders seeking to add value to expensive research and solve cross-disciplinary grand challenges; publishers seeking to be responsive to calls for transparency and reproducibility of the scientific record; and the public seeking to gain and re-use knowledge for their own purposes using new online tools. Meanwhile higher education institutions have been rather reluctant to assert their role in either incentivising or supporting their academic staff in meeting these more demanding requirements for research practice, partly due to lack of knowledge as to how to provide suitable assistance or facilities for data storage and curation/preservation. This paper discusses the activities and drivers behind one institution’s recent attempts to address this gap, with reflection on lessons learned and future direction.
This paper discusses work to implement the University of Edinburgh Research Data Management (RDM) policy by developing the services needed to support researchers and fulfil obligations within a changing national and international setting. This is framed by an evolving Research Data Management Roadmap and includes a governance model that ensures cooperation amongst Information Services (IS) managers and oversight by an academic-led steering group. IS has taken requirements from research groups and IT professionals, and at the request of the steering group has conducted pilot work involving volunteer research units within the three colleges to develop functionality and presentation for the key services. The first pilots cover three key services: the data store, a customisation of the Digital Curation Centre’s DMPonline tool, and the data repository. The paper will report on the plans, achievements and challenges encountered while we attempt to bring the University of Edinburgh RDM Roadmap to fruition.
Research Data MANTRA (or Management Training) is a labour of love. It has been an integral part of the University of Edinburgh's Research Data Management (RDM) programme since 2012. The staff at EDINA and Data Library at the University of Edinburgh has been curating this resource, based on internal and external feedback and has just published its fourth release since 2011. MANTRA is an open, web-based training course intended for self-paced learning by PhD students and early career researchers or others who manage digital data as part of a research project. It informs about good practice in research data management with real life stories. MANTRA's approach is to be fun, relevant, useful, interactive and timely (FRUIT!). Librarians' training needs are catered for through a companion resource, the DIY RDM Training Kit for Librarians.
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