Archives des mots-clés : research data management

Scientific data from and for the citizen

Posté le par

Authors : Sven Schade, Chrisa Tsinaraki, Elena Roglia

Powered by advances of technology, today’s Citizen Science projects cover a wide range of thematic areas and are carried out from local to global levels. This wealth of activities creates an abundance of data, for example, in the forms of observations submitted by mobile phones; readings of low-cost sensors; or more general information about peoples’ activities.

The management and possible sharing of this data has become a research topic in its own right. We conducted a survey in the summer of 2015 in order to collectively analyze the state of play in Citizen Science.

This paper summarizes our main findings related to data access, standardization and data preservation. We provide examples of good practices in each of these areas and outline actions to address identified challenges.

URL : http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/7842

Understanding Perspectives on Sharing Neutron Data at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Posté le par

Authors : Devan Ray Donaldson, Shawn Martin, Thomas Proffen

Even though the importance of sharing data is frequently discussed, data sharing appears to be limited to a few fields, and practices within those fields are not well understood. This study examines perspectives on sharing neutron data collected at Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s neutron sources.

Operation at user facilities has traditionally focused on making data accessible to those who create them. The recent emphasis on open data is shifting the focus to ensure that the data produced are reusable by others.

This mixed methods research study included a series of surveys and focus group interviews in which 13 data consumers, data managers, and data producers answered questions about their perspectives on sharing neutron data.

Data consumers reported interest in reusing neutron data for comparison/verification of results against their own measurements and testing new theories using existing data. They also stressed the importance of establishing context for data, including how data are produced, how samples are prepared, units of measurement, and how temperatures are determined.

Data managers expressed reservations about reusing others’ data because they were not always sure if they could trust whether the people responsible for interpreting data did so correctly.

Data producers described concerns about their data being misused, competing with other users, and over-reliance on data producers to understand data. We present the Consumers Managers Producers (CMP) Model for understanding the interplay of each group regarding data sharing.

We conclude with policy and system recommendations and discuss directions for future research.

URL : Understanding Perspectives on Sharing Neutron Data at Oak Ridge National Laboratory

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2017-035

Research Data Management in Research Institutions in Zimbabwe

Posté le par

Authors : Josiline Chigwada, Blessing Chiparausha, Justice Kasiroori

The research was aimed at evaluating how research data are being managed in research institutions in Zimbabwe. The study also sought to assess the challenges that are faced in research data management by research institutions in Zimbabwe.

Twenty five institutions of higher learning and other organisations that deal with research were selected using purposive sampling to participate in the study.

An online questionnaire on SurveyMonkey was sent to the selected participants and telephone interviews were done to follow up on participants who failed to respond on time. Data that were collected using interviews were entered manually into SurveyMonkey for easy analysis.

It was found out that proper research data management is not being done. Researchers were managing their own research data. Most of the research data were in textual and spreadsheet format. Graphical, audio, video, database, structured text formats and software applications research data were also available.

Lack of guidelines on good practice, inadequate human resources, technological obsolescence, insecure infrastructure, use of different vocabulary between librarians and researchers, inadequate financial resources, absence of research data management policies and lack of support by institutional authorities and researchers negatively impacted on research data management.

Authors recommend the establishment of research data repositories and use of existing research data repositories that are registered with the Registry of Research Data Repositories to ensure that research data standards are adhered to when doing research.

URL : Research Data Management in Research Institutions in Zimbabwe

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2017-031

 

An Analysis of Federal Policy on Public Access to Scientific Research Data

Posté le par

Authors : Adam Kriesberg, Kerry Huller, Ricardo Punzalan, Cynthia Parr

The 2013 Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) Memo on federally-funded research directed agencies with research and development budgets above $100 million to develop and release plans to increase and broaden access to research results, both published literature and data.

The agency responses have generated discussion and interest but are yet to be analyzed and compared. In this paper, we examine how 19 federal agencies responded to the memo, written by John Holdren, on issues of scientific data and the extent of their compliance to the directives outlined in the memo.

We present a varied picture of the readiness of federal science agencies to comply with the memo through a comparative analysis and close reading of the contents of these responses.

While some agencies, particularly those with a long history of supporting and conducting science, scored well, other responses indicate that some agencies have only taken a few steps towards implementing policies that comply with the memo.

These results are of interest to the data curation community as they reveal how different agencies across the federal government approach their responsibilities for research data management, and how new policies and requirements might continue to affect scientists and research communities.

URL : An Analysis of Federal Policy on Public Access to Scientific Research Data

DOI : http://doi.org/10.5334/dsj-2017-027

Inventory of Research Data Management Services in France

Posté le par

Author : Violaine Rebouillat

Data has become more and more ubiquitous in the research context. As a result, a growing number of services are created to analyze, store and share research data. This has induced the Research Data Working Group of the Digital Scientific Library (BSN10) to launch an inventory of French research data management services, funded by the Ministry of Higher Education and Research.

The inventory covers all services that are managed by French institutions and infrastructures and dedicated to public research teams from all fields. Sixty services, provided by forty-five structures, have already been identified and analyzed.

The paper describes the methodology used to carry out the inventory and analyzes these first results by service type, scope and research field. It also emphasizes the heterogeneous and emergent nature of the inventoried services.

URL : Inventory of Research Data Management Services in France

Alternative location : http://ebooks.iospress.nl/publication/46651

Advancing research data publishing practices for the social sciences: from archive activity to empowering researchers

Posté le par

Authors : Veerle Van den Eynden, Louise Corti

Sharing and publishing social science research data have a long history in the UK, through long-standing agreements with government agencies for sharing survey data and the data policy, infrastructure, and data services supported by the Economic and Social Research Council.

The UK Data Service and its predecessors developed data management, documentation, and publishing procedures and protocols that stand today as robust templates for data publishing.

As the ESRC research data policy requires grant holders to submit their research data to the UK Data Service after a grant ends, setting standards and promoting them has been essential in raising the quality of the resulting research data being published. In the past, received data were all processed, documented, and published for reuse in-house.

Recent investments have focused on guiding and training researchers in good data management practices and skills for creating shareable data, as well as a self-publishing repository system, ReShare. ReShare also receives data sets described in published data papers and achieves scientific quality assurance through peer review of submitted data sets before publication.

Social science data are reused for research, to inform policy, in teaching and for methods learning. Over a 10 years period, responsive developments in system workflows, access control options, persistent identifiers, templates, and checks, together with targeted guidance for researchers, have helped raise the standard of self-publishing social science data.

Lessons learned and developments in shifting publishing social science data from an archivist responsibility to a researcher process are showcased, as inspiration for institutions setting up a data repository.

URL : Advancing research data publishing practices for the social sciences: from archive activity to empowering researchers

DOI : doi:10.1007/s00799-016-0177-3

Data Management: New Tools, New Organization, and New Skills in a French Research Institute

Posté le par

Authors : Caroline Martin, Colette Cadiou, Emmanuelle Jannès-Ober

In the context of E-science and open access, visibility and impact of scientific results and data have become important aspects for spreading information to users and to the society in general.

The objective of this general trend of the economy is to feed the innovation process and create economic value. In our institute, the French National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture, Irstea, the department in charge of scientific and technical information, with the help of other professionals (Scientists, IT professionals, ethics advisors…), has recently developed suitable services for the researchers and for their needs concerning the data management in order to answer European recommendations for open data.

This situation has demanded to review the different workflows between databases, to question the organizational aspects between skills, occupations, and departments in the institute.

In fact, the data management involves all professionals and researchers to asset their working ways together.

URL : Data Management: New Tools, New Organization, and New Skills in a French Research Institute

DOI : http://doi.org/10.18352/lq.10196