1. Manage your data:
why and how?
OULS WISER Trinity 2009
22 May 2009
Luis Martinez Uribe
Luis.Martinez-Uribe@oerc.ox.ac.uk

2. Summary
• Background
• What are research data?
• What is research data management and curation?
• Oxford activities
• How to manage data and services available to researchers

3. Background
New tools and infrastructures available
to researchers
A key characteristic is the generation of
digital research data

4. How much data? A data deluge!
“More digital data will be
produce in the next 5 years
than in whole human history”
(Australian DEST )
2007 is the “crossover year”
where the amount of digital
information is greater than the
amount of available storage
Source: “The Expanding Digital Universe: A forecast of Worldwide Information Growth through 2010” IDC Whitepaper, March 2007

5. What are research data?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/iscjorgegarcia/2359144636/*

6. What are research data?
“Research data is the evidence base on which academic researchers build
their analytic or other work.
It includes the widest possible range of data volumes from relatively small
data sets up to vast data volumes generated by research in fields such as
particle physics. It also includes great variety and heterogeneity of data and
its accompanying metadata and documentation to make it usable and
understood, or the digital representations and records for physical research
data.” (UKRDS final report)

7. http://www.flickr.com/photos/piet_musterd/2231850447/ Examples

8. From Dr David Shotton presentation

9. http://www.flickr.com/photos/oliastro/2987657532/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/djmccrady/1883226927/

10. http://www.rcsb.org/pdb/explore.do?structureId=1BA4
http://ecrystals.chem.soton.ac.uk/604/

11. http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/XDB/ASP/recordDetails.asp?recordCount=37&start=0
From Building a VRE for the Humanities poster
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wrowlands/2270729405/
presented at All Hands Meeting 2007

12. http://www.flickr.com/photos/piper/22584430/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/althouse/273160052/

13. http://www.flickr.com/photos/thivierr/540241947/
EUROBAROMETER 69 PUBLIC OPINION IN THE EUROPEAN UNION FIRST RESULTS

14. http://www.flickr.com/photos/hanan_cohen/455238557/
Data Management and Curation

15. Research data management and curation
• Takes from knowledge/information management
• “…is understanding the current data needs and future ones” (US
Department of Defence)
• A means to an end
• Not just technical infrastructure but also procedures and policies
• Preservation http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbBa6Oam7-w
• Digital Curation
“maintaining and adding value to a trusted body of digital information for
current and future use; it encompasses the active management of data
throughout the information lifecycle” DCC Charter and Statement Principles

17. Why?
• Ensuring data quality and authenticity of research results
• Not re-inventing the wheel - data collection can be expensive!
• Better access to information (which in many cases is publicly funded) will
produce high quality research
• Future access (preservation) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbBa6Oam7-
w
• Added value from data mining or combining datasets
• and …

18. Comply with requirements of funding agencies
“the outputs from current and future research must be
preserved and remain accessible for future generations”
“expects research data generated as part of BBSRC support
to be made available…data should be retain for a period of 10
years after completion of the project”
“require that the applicants provide a data management and
sharing plan as part of their application”
“requires all grant holders to offer for deposit copies of data to
the UK Data Archive”
SHERPA JULIET SERVICE http://tinyurl.com/datapolicies

19. Data management and curation
activities in Oxford

20. Scoping Digital Repository Services
for Research Data Management

21. Interviews with researchers

22. Researcher’s data - the challenges
I COULDN’T MAKE SENSE OF THE WHEN RESEARCHERS LEAVE THE
DATA I COLLECTED FOR MY PhD 5 DEPARTMENT WE LOOSE ALL THE DATA
YEARS AGO THEY CREATED
HELP! I AM REQUIRED TO WE HAD TO MIGRATE DATA TO NEW
PRODUCE A DATA FORMATS AS NOT TO LOSE THEM. IT
MANAGEMENT PLAN TOOK US MONTHS!!
I WANT TO PUBLISH THE DATA AS AN
ADDITIONAL RESOURCE FOR READERS
OF MY PUBLISHED
BOOK/ARTICLE
TO SHARE OUR DATA WE HAD
TO PHYSICALLY TRANSPORT THE
SERVER
CLINICAL TRIALS DATA COLLECTED 30 YEARS AGO
CAN BE USED TO IDENTIFY THE DAUGHTERS OF
THOSE WOMAN WHO WERE ADMINISTERED A
DRUG THAT CAUSES CANCER IN THEIR DAUGHTERS WE COLLECTED DATA AS PART OF AN
INTERNATIONAL
COLLABORATION BUT WE DON’T
KNOW WHO OWNS THE DATA?

23. Top requirements for services

24. Consultation with service units
• Aiming to
– Validate the researchers’
requirements for services
– Determine the data management
services available to researchers in
Oxford
– Identify gaps in service provision

25. Findings
• Widespread expertise in data management and curation amongst service units in
Oxford
• Support provided in ad-hoc basis but services not made explicit
• Overall, the majority of the services in the data management and curation framework
are not offered fully or at all.
• There is a need for a university wide policy on data management and curation

26. Research data management and curation services

27. Embedding Institutional Data
Curation Services in Research (EIDCSR)

28. Where to start? A data management plan
*With details about:
• the need for access to existing data sources
• the data to be produced by the research project
• the planned quality assurance and back-up procedures for data
• the plans for management and archiving of collected data
• any expected difficulties in making data available for secondary research
(through data archiving) and measures to overcome such difficulties
• who holds copyright and Intellectual Property Rights of the data
• data management responsibility roles within the research team
[Support from Departments’ IT or research facilitators or Research Services]
* RELU Data Management Plans

29. File handling
• Use open file formats if possible (ODF, PNG, TIFF, JPEG)
[Training providers (OUCS, OULS, departmental…)]
• Use a clear directory structure
• Name files consistently (http://mst.nerc.ac.uk/file_naming_conventions.html)
• Use version control tools
[OUCS Subversion Repositories]

30. Collect metadata : “data about data”
• Different types
– descriptive metadata : describing the intellectual content of the object
Simple DC: Title/ Creator/Subject/Description/Publisher/Contributor/Date/
Type/Format/ Identifier/Source/Language/Relation/Coverage/Rights
– administrative metadata: information used to manage the object or
control access to it.
– structural metadata: information that ties each object to others.
[OUCS Research Technology Service may be able to help]
or the Digital Curation Centre (DCC)

31. Storage
• Check with your departmental IT
• Need a back-up strategy
– How often/stored for how long/ who will be responsible?
[Hierarchical File Server for back-up your files and long term storage]
[OUCS Research Technology Service may be able to help]
• Ethics and confidentiality
[Research Ethics Committee http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/curec/]
– http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/sharing/confidential.asp

32. Data sharing and long-term preservation
• Sharing through:
– Papers, local repositories, national repositories or web tools
– Informally at conferences, blogs or email
• Be aware of IP and copyright issues
– [http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/sharing/copyright.asp]
[ISI Innovation]
[Legal Services can help]
• Long-term preservation and sharing at national data centres
– UK Data Archive
– NERC data centres
– Archeological Data Service
– European Bioinformatics Centre (EBI)
– Many more like this at: http://tinyurl.com/globaldatarepo

33. Services available in Oxford
• ORA for research articles and other grey literature
• Hierarchical File Server for back-up your files
• OUCS Research Technology Service
• Departmental support through IT or research facilitators
• Departmental storage
• Legal Services
• Research Services
• Central University Research Ethics Committee
• Different training providers

34. Basic Data Management Principles
1. Plan before producing data
2. When possible choose right standards for open formats
3. Document your data
4. Store your data securely and always backup
5. Use trusted repositories to deposit your data for sharing and long-term
preservation

35. Other useful resources
• UK Data Archive Manage and Share guidelines
– http://tinyurl.com/datamanage
• Research Data Management Services: Findings of the Consultation
with Service Providers
– http://tinyurl.com/Oxdataservices
• MIT Data Management and Publishing guide
– http://tinyurl.com/qjz6ay
• Australian National University data management planning
– http://ilp.anu.edu.au/dm/

36. Thanks