DMP Tool at UNSW

Editor's Notes

• #3: As stipulated in the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research, researchers are expected to ensure that their data are managed well. But institutions need to provide infrastructure and support services to enable them to do this. To this end, the UNSW IT Investment Plan is funding several projects (over five years) to build enterprise systems for managing the University’s research data. During 2013 the projects delivered services for research data management planning and for archival storage of data. Under direction from Division of Research, the services were collaboratively developed by UNSW IT and the Library. During 2014, the Data Management Planning and Storage services were extended to specifically cater for the university’s higher degree research candidates.
• #4: Prioritisation of UNSW investment in IT for research was based on comprehensive input from academic and research areas of the university. The top selected program was for research data management services … and in particular, archival storage of data. My focus today is on the yellow and red bars in the timeline … which relate to research data management planning - for UNSW academics and higher degree research candidates. The RDMP is a web-based service, built by the Library’s Repository Services Team. It was a critical component of the data storage project because the Division of Research - who directed the project - stated that archival storage space was only to be allocated after completion of a research data management plan for the research project(RDMP). A Business Advisory Group, with membership from academic stakeholders, IT and the Library, as well as the Graduate Research School and the Research Ethics and Compliance unit was established from the outset, to ensure that systems and services were implemented with reference to existing infrastructure and practice across the institution.
• #5: The RDMP service was developed as a second component of an existing Library service, ResData, which was built with funding from ANDS during 2011-12, to deliver records of research datasets to Research Data Australia. The thinking behind building a Research Data Management Planning service on an existing repository-based system for managing research data was that metadata in ResData, some of which is provided by other information systems at UNSW, can be re-used across the research lifecycle Fundamental to this thinking is that existing institutional sources of truth are leveraged where possible - this reduces the data entry burden for researchers and optimises the accuracy of information in the Plan. A further consideration relates to integration and co-location of services for data management across the research lifecycle – currently planning, storage, and discovery … with future possibilities for preservation of data, and services for processing, analysing and sharing data during active phases of research projects.
• #6: So what do these integrations look like? Starting with the purple boxes at top – enterprise services provide information about people and grants – ResData receives this information in a daily feed from the UNSW Data Warehouse. The RDMP, in the blue boxes in the middle section of the diagram, comprises a custom-built user interface which researchers use to create and edit research data management plans. The information is stored and indexed in a Fedora repository. Information is communicated, via the Provisioning Service, to the UNSW Data Archive (at the bottom of the diagram). Details of research projects and their data, as well as roles and access permissions of personnel in research teams, are used to define storage space in the UNSW Data Archive. The workflow for Plans relating to postgraduate theses draws also on information from the UNSW student system - about the candidate, their supervisors and the research project.
• #8: Where do users get help? The ResData help guide provides a step by step guide for users. It is a good place to go if you want to understand the inner workings of the service because it is available on the ResData site to non-UNSW users.
• #9: There is also a website managed by the Division of Research which has comprehensive information about research data management, and links to the ResData site Support for Library Research Data Management Services is incorporated in services that Outreach Librarians deliver. This leverages the relationships that the Outreach Team has established with UNSW’s researchers. In delivering these services, Outreach Librarians worked closely with both Library Repository Services team (who built the service) and IT’s Research Support Specialist who provides advice on the Data Archive. Information about RDMPs has also been incorporated in Orientation to Research sessions for new researchers and HDR induction sessions.
• #10: I want to touch a little on sustainability and operational matters. In the first instance, Board composition is important – to ensure that services and tools for managing research data are aligned with university strategies and practices. Having senior stakeholders on the Board provides the resources and visibility required to achieve project goals. A fundamental requirement for sustainability is alignment between parties and interests Library – Division of Research – IT Governance – support services Policy – infrastructure – research practice
• #11: [Go through points on slide first] While the primary use of the RDMP at the moment is to access data storage – this is certainly not the primary purpose of a data management plan. A benefit of a repository-based system is that structured metadata can be re-used for various purposes, including creating an RDMP based on specifications of a particular funding bodies. An existing export function, which enables RDMPs to be saved as pdf files, can be extended with templates to meet these requirements. And metadata in ResData can be updated and edited as required and used as a tool for communication among members of a research team.
• #13: I’m going to use a Plan prepared for demonstration purposes – I’ll go into the edit function – note that the Plan can be exported – as a pdf document.
• #14: I’m not showing the complete page here … You can see along the top of the page that the Plan is organised under tabs that relate to Project governance, Data organisation, Ethics and privacy etc.
• #15: Note that drop-down options are provided – if the response to the question about non-digital data were ‘No” the sections for desciption and location of those data would not appear on the form.
• #16: Because I selected ‘No’ to the first question, further questions about the data are asked.
• #17: Had I responded ‘Yes’ – I would be asked to provide an approval number. We are currently planning integration with the Research Ethics and Compliance systems so that this information can be automatically populated.
• #18: On to the IP and copyright section – note that more than one copyright year is possible … this is required for longitudinal studies and for research involving multiple datasets.
• #19: Users can navigate through the form using ‘back’ and ‘next’ buttons on each page.
• #20: And finally to the preview page … So that’s all I’ll show you of the Plan. As I mentioned earlier the help files are pretty detailed and include screenshots from all sections of the RDMPs.