Presentation delivered by Gareth Cole at DARTS 3 June 2012

1. Creating and Maintaining a
Sustainable Research Data
Management Service: Where Do
Librarians Fit?
Jill Evans, Gareth Cole & Hannah
Lloyd-Jones (University of Exeter)

2. Introduction
• Who are we?
– The Open Exeter Project
– JISC funded: looking into Research Data
Management issues at the University of Exeter
– Inter-departmental

3. Open Exeter
• Main work strands:
– Follow the Data
• Working with six PGRs
• DAF survey
– Advocacy and Governance
– Technical Development
• Creation of Exeter Data Archive
– Creation of Training Materials
• Researcher Development Programme (RDP)
• Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice (PCAP)
• One-stop shop website
• Lunch byte workshops

4. Research Data Management (RDM)
• What is RDM?
• Why is it important?
• Why should librarians be involved?
• What can research data encompass?

5. What can Research Data be?
Types of data used by participants at the Debate, Discuss and Disseminate Workshop:
o Paper, i.e. printouts of experiment
o Word documents
o Excel spreadsheets
o Interview transcripts
o Audio files (recordings of interviews)
o Mapping data
o PDFs
o Raw data in CSV form
o Post-processed data in text files
o Graphs
o Tables for literature review
o Search data for systematic review
o Interviews and surveys: audio files, word transcripts
o Photographs
o Photocopies of documents from the archives
o NVivo files
o STATA files

6. What can Research Data be? (2)

7. Over To You
• What do you know about RDM issues?
• What would you like to know about RDM that
you don’t currently know?
• What training would you like to have on
RDM?
– What format would you like this training to have?

8. Training
• Who for?
– Researchers
– Professional Services Staff
• What form should training take?
– One-to-one sessions
– Workshops
– Presentations
– Online modules

9. How Researchers at Exeter want to
be Trained

10. Training (2)
• What should be included in the training?
– Data Management Plans
– Organising research material
– File and Document Management e.g. versioning
– Ethical and confidentiality issues
– Bibliographic Software
– Institutional Repositories and Open Access
– Any others?

11. What RDM Training Researchers at
Exeter want.
Training Area Number
How to Develop a Data 144
Management Plan
Organising Research Material 123
File and Document Management 112
Legal and Ethical Issues 115
Bibliographic Software 83
Institutional Repositories and Open 121
Access

12. Policy
• How do librarians fit in?
• Where do librarians fit in?
– Research and Knowledge Transfer staff
– Assistant College Managers for Research
– Computer Development Officers
– Central IT Services
• Who should have responsibility for what?
– Need for a clear structure otherwise
researchers will not become engaged

13. Sustainability - Institutional
• Needs to be sustainable:
– Sticks:
• Research Councils’ policies
• Government initiatives on Open Access
– Carrots:
• Increased chances of collaboration for inter-disciplinary
research
• Increased citations for researchers
• Recognition to researchers for ALL their work
• Librarians become more integrated and involved in the
research process

14. The Librarian’s role is changing
• Re-skilling for Research report (January 2012)
• Evolutionary process
• As information professionals, academic
librarians need to be experts on managing
information as well as finding it
• Increased awareness of the needs of the
research community

15. Any Questions?