Building a Trustworthy Data Repository: CoreTrustSeal Certification as a Lens for Service Improvements

Authors : Cara Key, Clara Llebot, Michael Boock

Objective

The university library aims to provide university researchers with a trustworthy institutional repository for sharing data. The library sought CoreTrustSeal certification in order to measure the quality of data services in the institutional repository, and to promote researchers’ confidence when depositing their work.

Methods

The authors served on a small team of library staff who collaborated to compose the certification application. They describe the self-assessment process, as they iterated through cycles of compiling information and responding to reviewer feedback.

Results

The application team gained understanding of data repository best practices, shared knowledge about the institutional repository, and identified areas of service improvements necessary to meet certification requirements. Based on the application and feedback, the team took measures to enhance preservation strategies, governance, and public-facing policies and documentation for the repository.

Conclusions

The university library gained a better understanding of top-notch data services and measurably improved these services by pursuing and obtaining CoreTrustSeal certification.

URL : Building a Trustworthy Data Repository: CoreTrustSeal Certification as a Lens for Service Improvements

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.761

Why Won’t They Just Adopt Good Research Data Management Practices? An Exploration of Research Teams and Librarians’ Role in Facilitating RDM Adoption

Authors: Clara Llebot, Hannah Gascho Rempe

Adoption of good research data management practices is increasingly important for research teams. Despite the work the research community has done to define best data management practices, these practices are still difficult to adopt for many research teams.

Universities all around the world have been offering Research Data Services to help their research groups, and libraries are usually an important part of these services. A better understanding of the pressures and factors that affect research teams may help librarians serve these groups more effectively.

The social interactions between the members of a research team are a key element that influences the likelihood of a research group successfully adopting best practices in data management.

In this article we adapt the Unified Theory of the Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) model (Venkatesh, Morris, Davis, & Davis, 2003) to explain the variables that can influence whether new and better, data management practices will be adopted by a research group.

We describe six moderating variables: size of the team, disciplinary culture, group culture and leadership, team heterogeneity, funder, and dataset decisions.

We also develop three research group personas as a way of navigating the UTAUT model, and as a tool Research Data Services practitioners can use to target interactions between librarians and research groups to make them more effective.

URL : Why Won’t They Just Adopt Good Research Data Management Practices? An Exploration of Research Teams and Librarians’ Role in Facilitating RDM Adoption

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7710/2162-3309.2321

Peer Review of Research Data Submissions to ScholarsArchive@OSU: How can we improve the curation of research datasets to enhance reusability?

Authors : Clara Llebot, Steven Van Tuyl

Objective

Best practices such as the FAIR Principles (Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, Reusability) were developed to ensure that published datasets are reusable. While we employ best practices in the curation of datasets, we want to learn how domain experts view the reusability of datasets in our institutional repository, ScholarsArchive@OSU.

Curation workflows are designed by data curators based on their own recommendations, but research data is extremely specialized, and such workflows are rarely evaluated by researchers.

In this project we used peer-review by domain experts to evaluate the reusability of the datasets in our institutional repository, with the goal of informing our curation methods and ensure that the limited resources of our library are maximizing the reusability of research data.

Methods

We asked all researchers who have datasets submitted in Oregon State University’s repository to refer us to domain experts who could review the reusability of their data sets. Two data curators who are non-experts also reviewed the same datasets.

We gave both groups review guidelines based on the guidelines of several journals. Eleven domain experts and two data curators reviewed eight datasets.

The review included the quality of the repository record, the quality of the documentation, and the quality of the data. We then compared the comments given by the two groups.

Results

Domain experts and non-expert data curators largely converged on similar scores for reviewed datasets, but the focus of critique by domain experts was somewhat divergent.

A few broad issues common across reviews were: insufficient documentation, the use of links to journal articles in the place of documentation, and concerns about duplication of effort in creating documentation and metadata. Reviews also reflected the background and skills of the reviewer.

Domain experts expressed a lack of expertise in data curation practices and data curators expressed their lack of expertise in the research domain.

Conclusions

The results of this investigation could help guide future research data curation activities and align domain expert and data curator expectations for reusability of datasets.

We recommend further exploration of these common issues and additional domain expert peer-review project to further refine and align expectations for research data reusability.

URL : Peer Review of Research Data Submissions to ScholarsArchive@OSU: How can we improve the curation of research datasets to enhance reusability?

DOI : https://doi.org/10.7191/jeslib.2019.1166

Remediation Data Management Plans : A Tool for Recovering Research Data from Messy, Messy Projects

Author : Clara Llebot

Data Management Plans (DMPs) have been used in the last decade to encourage good data management practices among researchers. DMPs are widely used, preventive tools that encourage good data management practices. DMPs are traditionally used to manage data during the planning stage of the project, often required for grant proposals, and prior to data collection.

In this paper we will use a case study to argue that Data Management Plans can be useful in improving the management of the data of research projects that have moved beyond the planning stage of the research life cycle.

In particular, we focus on the case of active projects where data has already been collected and is still being analyzed.

We discuss the differences and commonalities in structure between preventive Data Management Plans and remedial Data Management Plans, and describe in detail the additional considerations that are needed when writing remedial Data Management Plans: the goals and audience of the document, the data inventory, and an implementation plan.

URL : Remediation Data Management Plans : A Tool for Recovering Research Data from Messy, Messy Projects

DOI : https://doi.org/10.2218/ijdc.v13i1.667