Andrew Cox Research data management

Online Information 2013, 20th November, Victoria Park Plaza, London

The academic library’s role in
research data management
Andrew Cox, a.m.cox@sheffield.ac.uk

Information School, University of Sheffield

Nov-13

1. WHAT IS THE RESEARCH DATA
MANAGEMENT CHALLENGE?

What is research data? Variety
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•

Weather measurements
Photographs
Results from experiments
Government records
GIS data
Simulation data
Log data
Field notes
Software

Nov-13

• Images (e.g. brain scans)
• Quantitative data (e.g.
household survey data)
• Historical documents
• Moving images
• Physical objects: such as
bones or blood samples
• Digitised photos / born
digital photos
• Social media data: tweets
• Metadata

Learning material produced by RDMRose
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/is/research/projects/rdmrose

Duffy (2013) on scale of the data issue
at University of Birmingham
•
•
•
•
•
•

3000 items in institutional repository
50,000 items in special collections
75,000 publications for REF
2,700,000 items in library
700,000,000 folders in top 100 accounts Volume
Perhaps 1,000,000,000 folders for the whole
university

Nov-13


Complexity of information practices
• Information flow maps for life science research
(RIN, 2009) e.g. in neuroscience illustrate
– Multiple data sources, of different types
• Visual images, quantitative data, secondary data

– Storage devices
– Multiple analytic tools
• Some requiring grid power

– Supporting complex scholarly communication

• Different communities do things differently, eg in
terms of file types, tools used
Nov-13

Mandating good RDM
• Funders’ mandates

Value

– Research Councils UK Common Principles on Data
Policy:
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/Pages/DataPolicy.aspx
– EPSRC principles and expectations:
http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/about/standards/researchdata
/Pages/default.aspx

• Institutional policies
– DCC list, http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/policy-andlegal/institutional-data-policies/uk-institutional-datapolicies
Nov-13


Force field analysis of RDM
Compliance

Other priorities

Good research practice

Data storage and security

Open access

Data preservation

Nov-13

Nature of data
Good
Research Data
Management
practices

Academic culture & lack
of reuse culture

Lack of RDM knowledge
& skills

Legal, ethical & commercial
exceptions

You will want to think about the differing strengths of these forces in your context

2. WHAT IS THE POTENTIAL LIBRARY
ROLE IN RDM?
Nov-13


Why do librarians have something to
contribute?
• Open access leadership role
• Knowledge of relevant information management
principles: resource discovery, collection
development, metadata skills and practices,
licensing/copyright
• Liaison, negotiation skills and contacts with
academics
• Established LIS networks for sharing best practice
across the profession

Areas where libraries can contribute to
RDM
• Policy
• Teaching appropriate literacies to PIs and
early career researchers, PGR and taught
students
• Advisory services on RDM; web sites
– Awareness of data for reuse; data citation
practices; copyright and licensing of data

• Signposting
• Auditing/ asset review of data sets
researchers have
• Data curation capacity, e.g. appraisal and
collection management policy, metadata
creation/advice
• Specialist roles in data analysis
Involving many library teams: liaison team, metadata
specialists, systems team… perhaps embedded roles

• In collaboration with
other professional
services such as
computer services,
research office and
archives/records
management staff
researchers and
research
administrators
other stakeholders,
internal and external

Cox AM, Verbaan E and Sen B (2012) Upskilling liaison librarians for research data management.
Ariadne 70. Available at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue70/cox-et-al (accessed 10 April 2013).

Extra-Institutional
Stakeholders

Institutional
Stakeholders
PVC
research

Department

Perspectives on RDM
Other
Researchers
In the discipline

Computing
services
Researchers
In other
disciplines

Research Project
Commercial
Partners
and
Customers

The
Researcher

Research
Office

Data
repository
manager

Library

Other
HEIs

Human
resources
Records unit
and university archive
Funding
councils
The public and wider
Society

Individual
professional
perspective

3. WHAT ARE UK LIBRARIES DOING
AND PLANNING TO DO?
Nov-13


RDM in UK HEI libraries survey results
• 83 (c 50%) UK HEIs responded to our survey (with
Stephen Pinfield) conducted in November 2012
[paper available from JOLIS OnlineFirst
doi:10.1177/0961000613492542 or from WRRO
http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/76107/ ]
• For an international comparison see Corrall et al.
(2013)
• Take home finding: Low level of service
development; high priority for next 3 years

Current RDM services
Few welldeveloped or
extensive
services currently
being offered by
libraries but
some basic
services

Priorities for the next 3 years
Libraries see
RDM services
as a priority,
with a
particular
emphasis on
advisory, policy
support and
training
services

Rank by current
activity
Open access and policy
1
Copyright
2
Data citation
3
Awareness of reusable sources 4
External data sources
5
Early career awareness
6
PGR training
7
Advisory service
8
Licensing
9
RDM plan advice
10
Web portal
11
Data repository
12
Metadata
13
Audit RDM
14
Data analysis
15
PGT training
16
Data impact
17
UG training
18

Rank by top
future priority
1
8
7
5
11
3
3
2
14
11
9
5
10
13
17
15
15
18

Survey results: challenges
• “The skill set of the library workforce, the costs
of RDM and the difficult economic climate.”
• “Capacity and workload in a context of
shrinking resources”

Challenges
• Librarians are already over-taxed with roles; they operate in
a highly dynamic context; organisational change (e.g.
embedding) and multi-professional services
• Its part of a fundamental shift to an inside out library
• Attitudes needed to operate in fluid, changeable context
are different
• They often do not have personal experience of research
• Its non trivial to translate library IM skills to research data
issues (eg learning about metadata for data)
• Will researchers look to libraries for this support? “Being
taken seriously”
• The complexity and scale of issues
• Resources, infrastructure, management structures have yet
to be created in most institutions

What librarians need…
• Confidence raising… demystification of a
complex social world
• Increased knowledge and competencies
• A change of identity – ability to take risks,
operate in undefined contexts
• Prompts to get started with RDM, rather than
waiting till policy or infrastructure is clear

Where libraries are starting with RDM
• Collaborate with researchers (Garritano and Carlson (2009)
at Purdue)
• Create a web site with generic advice for all researchers
• Use the 23 things model to encourage library staff to find
the answers to key questions (
http://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/openexeterrdm/blog/2012/04/11
/the-holistic-librarian-open-for-business/ )
• Perform a Data Asset Framework (DAF) survey to explore
what data the institution has and how it is managed
• Seek representation on faculty and departmental research
committees

Nov-13


4. LEARNING MORE

Nov-13


Key UK resources for further learning
• Pryor, G. (2012). Managing Research Data. London: Facet.
contains chapters on key aspects, including an excellent
overview by the editor and a chapter by Sheila Corrall on
librarians’ roles in RDM.
• Digital Curation Centre (DCC), http://www.dcc.ac.uk/
– Jones, Pryor and White (2013) explains the issues in setting up
RDM service, http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides/

• JISC Managing Research Data programme of research,
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/mrd.aspx
• Auckland (2012) sets challenge of RDM in wider context of
need to support research more generally,
http://www.rluk.ac.uk/content/re-skilling-research/
• RDMRose
Nov-13


The URL…

An Open Educational Resource on RDM
tailored for information professionals

How can you use the learning
materials?
• Gain a systematic grounding in RDM, through
self-directed CPD
• Undertake targeted learning about an RDM
topic that is key for your role
• Reuse material or ideas for teaching your
library colleagues and others – join an ongoing informal RDMRose user group
• Come to Sheffield to take RDM as a module on
one of our Masters courses

MSc Data Science

New for
2014

• Data science is an emerging field that
seeks to discover and explore new ways
of exploiting data to support decisionmaking
• There is a “Big Data” explosion with a
greater demand than ever before to
manage, analyse and use data effectively.
• Shortage of trained staff to enable
organisations to take advantage of Big
Data
• Modules include: Data Analysis, Data
Mining and visualisation, Research data
Management, Business Intelligence,
Information Storage and Retrieval

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Nov-13


RDM as a “social mess”/ “wicked
problem”
• Different (perhaps incommensurable) views
of the problem and contradictory solutions
• The problem is linked to other problems
• Cultural, economic and other constraints on
solutions
• Lack of information about current state of
affairs
• Numerous possible intervention points
• Considerable uncertainty, ambiguity and risk
Rittel and Webber (1973); Horn and Weber
(2007)

Nov-13

• Implies a
different way
of operating
• How well is
IM able to
deal with
these types
of problems?
• In a
globalised
world this
type of
problem is
increasing

Leadership in wicked problem spaces
Leadership style: a bricolage
• Relationships not structures
• Reflection not reaction
• Positive deviance not negative acquiescence
• Negative capability
• Constructive dissent not destructive consent
• Collective intelligence not individual genius
• Community of fate not a fatalist community
• Empathy not egotism
Grint (2008)
Nov-13

Design thinking (not so clumsy!)
A type of creative, problem solution orientated
thinking, that requires:
But does this fit
• Empathy
information
• Integrative thinking
professionals’ mind
• Optimism
sets and attitudes?
(Rylander 2009)
• Experimentalism
• Collaboration
Is it at odds with
(Brown 2008)
professionalisation?
Nov-13

The clumsy librarian
• We cannot hope for elegant solutions, they fit ordinary
problems
• Wicked problems need clumsy solutions and
organisations
– Have a egalitarian focus on building consensus, a
hierarchical stress on role of experts, an individualist trust
in competition and a fatalistic wait and see attitude

• “Why librarians should be clumsy with research data”
http://www.infotoday.eu/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?Art
icleID=92231

Nov-13


The clumsy curriculum
• Research based learning – e.g. going and
talking to researchers
• Case study work – e.g. group work around a
complex scenario of imaginary but realistic
institutional context, stakeholder positions
and conflicts over RDM
– Need to add “prototyping” element

Nov-13

References
•

•
•
•

Corrall, S., Kennan, M.A. and Afzal, W. (2013), “Bibliometrics and research data
management: Emerging trends in library research support services”, Library
Trends, 61 (3), pp.636-674.
Cox AM, Verbaan E and Sen B (2012) Upskilling liaison librarians for research data
management. Ariadne 70. Available at: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue70/cox-etal (accessed 10 November 2013).
Cox, AM and Pinfield, S. (2013) Research data management and libraries: Current
activities and future priorities, Journal of Library and Information Sciene
Duffy, S. (2013). Managing research data in an open access world. Presentation to
RLUK members day, Exeter April 2013,

http://www.rluk.ac.uk/content/presentations-and-slides-rluk-membersmeeting-exeter
• Garritano, J.R. and Carlson, J.R. (2009). A subject librarian’s guide to
collaborating on e-Science projects, Issues in Science and Technology
Librarianship, Spring No. 57. Available at http://www.istl.org/09spring/refereed2.html
•

RIN. (2009). Patterns of information use and exchange : case studies of researchers
in the life sciences. London. Retrieved from http://rinarchive.jisccollections.ac.uk/our-work/using-and-accessing-information-resources/patternsinformation-use-and-exchange-case-studie.

Nov-13

Andrew Cox Research data management

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