Webinar on Social Science Data Management and Curation

Date: January 13, 2014

Time: 2:00-3:30pm US Central (8.00-8.30pm GMT)

Speakers:
Jared Lyle, Director of Curation Services, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).

Jared Lyle directs the Curation Services Unit, which is responsible for Metadata, Bibliography of Data-Related Literature, and Digital Preservation. His work includes developing and maintaining a comprehensive approach to data management and digital preservation policy at ICPSR.

Amy Pienta, Director of Data Acquisitions, Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).

Amy Mehraban Pienta is Acquisitions Director at ICPSR. She is also a research affiliate of the University of Michigan Center on the Demography of Aging and the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan. At ICPSR, she oversees new data acquisitions. Major responsibilities include identifying new data collections in the social sciences, negotiating with potential data depositors, strategic planning for new data acquisitions, and developing appraisal standards for data.

Description:

The speakers will discuss resources and tools for social science data management and curation, including data management planning, preparing data for sharing and preservation, and supporting access. They will highlight examples from ICPSR.

Registration:

IMPORTANT: The webinar is free but in order to participate, please make sure that you register at http://ala.adobeconnect.com/e471pdbc64z/event/registration.html.

Learn how to set up and run a data service

There are still places available on the UK Data Archive's two-day event on How to Set up and Run a Data Service: The Challenges of Social Science Data.

Held on 28 and 29 November 2013 at the University of Essex (Colchester), this is a once-a-year opportunity to go behind the scenes and learn first-hand from specialists at the UK Data Archive. The Archive has over 40 years’ experience in selecting, ingesting, curating and providing access to data. UKDA are a designated Place of Deposit for The National Archives and are internationally acknowledged experts in this field.

Over the two days participants will learn about the strategies and practices used in the Archive's daily work, with a focus on storing and sharing social science data, including microdata, aggregate, qualitative and historical data.

Both days will include optional specialist surgeries which will give participants the opportunity to engage with Archive experts about specific needs and interests.

The workshop is best suited for those who are actively working with storing and sharing data for use in social science research, or plan to in the near future. This course is unlikely to be suitable for undergraduate or postgraduate students unless working specifically in a data archiving environment.

The course fee is £250, which includes all workshop materials plus coffee, lunch, drinks reception and evening meal on Day 1.

For a full programme and booking information: http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/news-events/events.aspx?id=3543

Learn to cost, plan, manage and share social science data effectively

There are still places available for Planning, Appraising, Ingesting and Documenting Social Science Data, a one-day workshop at the UK Data Archive (University of Essex, Colchester) on 27 November 2013.

When it comes to dealing with the ever increasing commitments of research data, the UK Data Service continues to see institutions struggle with the challenges of domain specificity, in particular, how to treat social science data.

How do we help our local researchers cost, plan and manage social science data effectively and following best practice? How do we then appraise, ingest, curate and make accessible that mixed bag of data that a social scientist might have created? How can we effectively demonstrate the impact of sharing?

In this workshop UKDS will showcase our collaborative support and training materials that are being used to support:

• research support staff who face dealing with ensuring compliance with data management responsibilities set out in almost all research applications (as well as persuading them it's the right thing to do)
• institutional repository managers now charged with appraising, ingesting, describing and managing social science research data created by local academics.

The day includes hands-on work getting your hands dirty with data!

The workshop is best suited for those who are actively working with storing and sharing data for use in social science research, or plan to in the near future. This course is unlikely to be suitable for undergraduate or postgraduate students unless working specifically in a data archiving environment.

Course fees include all workshop materials plus refreshments and lunch:

· £30 for UK students

· £60 for UK academic staff (including research centres), ESRC researchers, voluntary and public sectors staff
· £150 for commercial and international participants

For a full programme and booking information: http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/news-and-events/eventsitem/?id=3556

How to set up and run a data service: the challenges of social science data

A once-a-year opportunity for data archivists to go behind the scenes and learn first-hand from specialists at the UK Data Archive is happening on 28 and 29 November 2013.

Over two days participants will learn about the strategies and practices used in the Archive's daily work, with a focus on storing and sharing social science data, including microdata, aggregate, qualitative and historical data.

The Archive has over 40 years’ experience in selecting, ingesting, curating and providing access to data. We are a designated Place of Deposit for The National Archives and are internationally acknowledged experts in this field.

The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) will be supporting fully funded scholarships to attend this workshop.

Applications to join this event are now being taken. Further details and booking can be found at: http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/news-events/events.aspx?id=3543

Workshop on research data management

Book now for the workshop on looking after and managing your research data

Bookings are now open for an in-depth two-day course where researchers can develop their knowledge and professional skills in handling and managing the research data they produce.

New data management requirements are challenging for early career researchers, as the necessary skills are often not taught in Ph.D. programmes.

To fill that gap, the UK Data Archive is offering a course focusing on all kinds of social science data - quantitative and qualitative - across the following seven areas of data management and data sharing:

·         the benefits of good data management

·         data management planning

·         documenting and contextualising your data

·         formatting your data

·         storing your data, including data security, data transfer, encryption and file sharing

·         ethics and consent

·         data copyright

 

This course, on 24-25 April 2013 at the UK Data Archive, is offered as part of the ESRC Advanced Training Network.

Full details and booking: http://www.esds.ac.uk/news/eventdetail.asp?id=3364

 

 

How to set up and run a data service

Title: How to set up and run a data service: the challenges of social science data Date: 8-9 November 2012
Location: UK Data Archive, University of Essex, Colchester

Applications are now being accepted for this once-a-year opportunity to go behind the scenes at the UK Data Archive and learn first hand from its social science data specialists. This year's event is scheduled for 8-9 November 2012.

Over one and a half days participants will learn about the strategies and practices used in the Archive's daily work with a focus on storing and sharing social science data, including microdata, aggregate, qualitative and historical data. Activities range from presentations to a hands on workshop on research data management to small-group discussions on key specialist areas. Participants will also be invited to tour the Archive's newly built secure data centre, a £2.4 million scalable facility designed to expand access and computational capability for sensitive and disclosive data.

Founded at the University of Essex in 1967, the Archive has 45 years' experience in selecting, ingesting, curating and providing access to data. We are a designated Place of Deposit for The National Archives and are internationally acknowledged experts in this field.

In addition, the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) will be supporting a few fully funded scholarships to attend this workshop.

For the complete programme and details on fees and application procedures see http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/news-events/events.aspx?id=3295

Report on Academic Data Management and Curation Practices and Needs: The Problem of Data

Two new reports on research funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation have been published by CLIR (Council on Library and Information Resources)

The Problem of Data: Data Management and Curation Practices Among University Researchers, by Lori Jahnke and Andrew Asher,

and

Data Curation Education: A Snapshot, by Spencer Keralis

Jahnke and Asher explore workflows and methodologies at a variety of academic data curation sites, and Keralis delves into the academic milieu of library and information schools that offer instruction in data curation. Their conclusions point to the urgent need for a reliable and increasingly sophisticated professional cohort to support data-intensive research in our colleges, universities, and research centers.

See: http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub154

On-line training in Research Data Management

The Research Data Management Training, or MANTRA project has produced an open, online training course to help disseminate good practice in research data management at the University of Edinburgh and beyond.

What is it?

It is a non-credit, free online course which provides guidelines for good practice in research data management. It consists of interactive online units focused on key concepts of data management. They include video clips featuring senior academics talking about data management challenges. In addition there are practical exercises in handling data within four software analysis environments (SPSS, NVivo, R and ArcGIS), which learners can download and work through at their own pace.

Who is it for?

It is for PhD students, early career researchers, and all others who are planning a research project based on digital data. The course is an Open Educational Resource that may be freely used by anyone. It is available through an open license for rejigging, rebranding, and repurposing.

Who produced it?

The Data Library team at EDINA produced the materials over the course of the past year as part of the JISC Managing Research Data programme. They worked with the School of Social and Political Studies, the School of GeoSciences and the Doctorate in Clinical Psychology to target the resources towards their doctoral training programmes. The Data Library at the University of Edinburgh has been providing research data services to staff and students for over twenty-five years. The data handling software practicals were written by expert data analysts in each software domain. The online module was created using Xerte Online Toolkits, an open source authoring tool.

For more information, see the course website: http://datalib.edina.ac.uk/mantra

Managing and Sharing Data: Best Practice for Researchers

To support researchers in producing high quality research data for long-term use, the UK Data Archive has revised and expanded its popular and highly cited Managing and Sharing Data: best practice for researchers, first published in 2009.

The new third edition is 36 pages covering:

* why and how to share research data
* data management planning and costs
* formatting data
* storing data
* ethics and consent issues
* copyright strategies

These are augmented with a list of third-party references, 19 case studies that demonstrate best practice examples and a checklist to guide data management planning. A suite of more detailed online information on the UK Data Archive website complements this guide.

Like previous editions, the revised guide is free of charge to higher education researchers in the UK thanks to funding from the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), the Rural Economy and Land Use (Relu) Programme and the UK Data Archive. JISC and Relu have joined the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in officially endorsing the guide.

The guide is available online in PDF format http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/media/2894/managingsharing.pdf. Printed copies can be requested from comms@data-archive.ac.uk

New Geospatial Resource Centre

The Geospatial Data Preservation Resource Center, is a website aiming to help those responsible for producing and managing geospatial data learn about the latest approaches and tools available to facilitate long-term geospatial data preservation and access: 

http://geopreservation.org/

The Web site provides descriptions and links for a variety of relevant resources, including education and training modules, useful tools and software, information on policies and standards for preserving geospatial data, and examples of successful preservation and associated benefits.

This first release of the Web site, which CIESIN will be enhancing over the next year, was developed as an element of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP) of the Library of Congress. CIESIN, the Center for International Earth Science Information Network, is a unit of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, based at the Lamont campus in Palisades, New York.

Looking after your research data: a workshop for trainers

Date: 22-23 September 2011 Location: UK Data Archive, University of Essex, Colchester

This workshop, hosted by the UK Data Archive, will showcase outputs from the Researcher Development Initiative (RDI) project Data Management and Sharing for Researchers Training.

The workshop is aimed at people who are tasked with training or teaching researchers - at all levels - in how to look after social research data, specifically UK-based lecturers, tutors, graduate teaching assistants and research support staff in universities, colleges and research organisations.

Over one and a half days, participants will work through a series of training modules covering the seven key areas of data management identified by the UK Data Archive.

The workshop is free as it is sponsored by the RDI project. We are also offering a limited number of travel and accommodation bursaries.

For further details, including programme and booking form, see

http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/news-events/events.aspx?id=2867

Data Management Costing Tool

The UK Data Archive has recently developed an activity-based data management costing tool for the social sciences. The pilot version has been made available for testing, and your feedback would be appreciated.


The tool and background information on how it was developed are available at: http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/create-manage/planning-for-sharing/costing

The UKDA is interested to know how useful and practical this simple tool would be for researchers and data managers when preparing research applications and/or data management plans. We also want your view on the tool's approach to costing data management, and suggestions for improvements and additions.

Feedback and comments can be sent to datasharing@data-archive.ac.uk until 20 May 2011.

The tool's approach is to measure the additional costs – above standard research procedures and practices – that are needed to make research data shareable beyond the primary research team. The tool is based on identifying all applicable data management activities and steps required to make data shareable, based on a data management checklist, then costing each activity in terms of people’s time or physical resources needed such as hardware or software.

The tool was developed as part of the Data Management Planning for ESRC Research Data-rich Investments project (DMP-ESRC), in collaboration with various researchers.

How to set up and run a data service: the challenges of social science data

13th-14th October
UK Data Archive, Essex University


A once-a-year opportunity for data archivists to go behind the scenes and learn first hand from specialists at the UK Data Archive. Over two days participants will learn about the strategies and practices used in the Archive's daily work, with a focus on storing and sharing social science data, including microdata, aggregate, qualitative and historical data.

The Archive has over 40 years experience in selecting, ingesting, curating and providing access to data. We are a designated Place of Deposit for The National Archives and are internationally acknowledged experts in this field.

The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) will be supporting three fully funded scholarships to attend this workshop.

Further details including programme and booking: http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/news-events/events.aspx?id=2864

JISC Rights and Repositories Programme Meeting 2008 - report

Following a request I am re-posting a blog I wrote for the DataShare Project blog http://www.disc-uk.org/datashare.html on a JISC Rights and Repositories Programme Meeting that I attended for the project in London on 05/09/2008.

The meeting primarily covered issues of intellectual property and copyright for people considering establishing instititional repositories.
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OPENING SESSION

The opening speaker stressed that IPR should be a central concern of any repository manager, that ‘IPR needs to be viewed as an essential part of individual academic integrity and institutional quality control’.

The speaker stated that ‘confusion, lack of awareness, poor practice, contradictory policy and risk aversion currently dominate thinking about this subject at all levels – particularly amongst senior management’, and that most practices reflect ‘pre-digital attitudes to publishing’. The speaker pointed out that sorting out IPR problems acts as a ‘lightening conductor’ to highlight issues of ownership, power, control and status that might not have been transparently and explicitly dealt with by the institution before.

The speaker then detailed some of the experiences of Jorum, a JISC-sponsored online repository for learning and teaching resources, gave an outline of the Jorum 3-tier licensing structure [JorumOpen, JorumEductionUK, and JorumPlus], and showed two slides on the reasons for and implications of open access.

Though the problems with institutional management of IPR were discussed and highlighted, the only strategy suggested for communicating with or influencing senior staff to improve management of IPR was that getting senior management ‘to sign things focuses their minds’.

http://www.jorum.ac.uk/

OVERVIEW OF LEGAL LANDSCAPE

The speaker gave a very good outline of the legal environment in relation to IPR and copyright.

The presentation outlined various kinds of rights that repository developers may have to consider including patents, trade marks, designs, trade secrets/confidential information, and copyrights and related rights, including database rights, performers’ rights (applies to lectures) and moral rights.

Copyright ‘protects the skill and labour expended in the creation of something new’, is automatic and ‘does not require registration’. The © symbol is not necessary for an output to be under copyright (though its inclusion does remind the user).

Database rights protect against copying without permission. Provided ‘the collection and verification of the contents of a database involved significant resources, protection is given’. ‘Arguably most repositories will enjoy both database rights and copyright’.

Major issues to be considered by repository managers include

- Who owns the rights to materials being added? This can be difficult as institutional positions are not always clear, and ownership of academic output may sometimes need to be clarified e.g. does the author, or the employing institution own the IPR?

- Have rights been licensed or transferred to the repository? If not, does the repository have the right to hold/redistribute the materials?

- What is the policy for orphan works?

Licenses to be aware of include Open Source software licenses, Creative Commons (Creative Archive, Science Commons) licences, CLA (Copyright Licensing Agency) or other RRO (Reproduction Rights Organisation) licenses.

The remainder of the presentation outlined possible future changes to the law (Gowers Review, proposed EU extension to term of sound recordings, EU review of copyright law).

Recommended changes of note from Gowers report include

- Expanding Educational Exceptions to copyright to include some off-site activities (currently exceptions restricted to acts carried out on-site at an educational establishment).

- Educational Exceptions should be media independent

- Expanding Library Privilege to allow more copies to be kept for preservation purposes, and more types of material to be preserved (including sound recordings, films etc).

- Expanding Library Privilege to museums and galleries.

The presenter also highlighted an EU draft directive on public sector information, which should it become law, would mean all documents created and published by a university would have to be made available for public sector exploitation at a minimal cost.

RIGHTS RELATED ISSUES WITH ETHOS

Ethosnet is a single point of access to UK electronic theses in collaboration with the British Library.

Ethosnet has taken the decision to make electronic theses available without author permission, creating an opt-out rather than an opt-in service. This necessitates a robust ‘take down policy’.

Ethos is copying the Jorum ‘take down policy’ which removes publications and output but leaves the metadata and citation in place.

http://www.ethos.ac.uk/

CASE STUDY OF LICENSING IN PRIMO

A very interesting presentation on the complexity of licensing content for practice based music research.

I don’t think DataShare will be concerned with resources of this kind so I will not elaborate (Robin etc. correct me if I’m wrong). An overview of the presentation can be found here

http://www.meanboyfriend.com/overdue_ideas/2008/09/rights-and-repositories-licensing-content-for-primo.html

An interesting recommendation was made, that metadata be used to keep track of when copyright expires.

http://primo.sas.ac.uk/eprints/

RESHAPING THE CULTURAL PERCEPTIONS OF COPYRIGHT

This session highlighted the importance of taking IPR issues into consideration from the beginning of any project. In particular the speaker recommended an IPR audit in the budget plan at the start of a project, particularly those where content will be created.

Recommendations include

- Each project has a nominated person responsible for IPR issues

- All materials and communications about IPR and rights issues to be archived and preserved.

- A thorough understanding of the difference between ownership and licensing: ‘assignment’ and ‘license’.

- Adaptation of the ‘creative commons’ license.

The Jorum experience is that ownership should remain with the author/creator and repositories should secure licenses, and that these licenses should be in perpetuity.

John Casey recommended links

JISC template for consortium agreements for IPR

http://www.jisc.ac.uk/fundingopportunities/proj_manguide/projectplanning/partners.aspx

Intellectual property rights in e-learning programmes: good practice guidance for senior managers

http://www.hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2006/06_20

Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) in networked e-learning: a beginner’s guide for content developers

http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/publications/johncasey_1.htm

Managing IPR in digital learning materials: a development pack for institutional repositories. http://trustdr.ulster.ac.uk/outputs.php (this link is now broken, an abstract is available here, but not the full document http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/news/fullstory.php?id=110)

Eduserv online copyright toolkit http://copyrighttoolkit.com/index.html

RISK MANAGEMENT

Having arrived in the second half of the risk management session the discussion concerned the necessity of a robust take down policy.

A robust take down policy is a significant step towards protecting a repository from charges of breach of copyright. Things to consider in this policy include how to ensure a rapid removal of problematic objects, in particular during periods when staff are unlikely to be in the office e.g. Christmas; and how to verify that the complainant does actually have copyright of the material.

OTHER LINKS RECOMMENDED DURING MEETING

JISC digital repositories programme
http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/programme_digital_repositories.aspx

JISC legal http://www.jisclegal.ac.uk/

JISC CAMEL (Collaborative Approaches to Management in E-Learning)
http://www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk/camel

Creative Commons http://creativecommons.org/

Queen Mary Intellectual Property Research Institute
www.qmipri.org/index.hmtl

Web 2.0 rights project http://www.web2rights.org.uk/

Managing and sharing social science research data: legal and ethical issues

8 April 2011, 10.00-2.30
British Library, London

http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/news-events/events.aspx?id=2751

As part of its current Researcher Development Initiative (RDI) grant, the UK Data Archive will host a workshop on managing and sharing research data for quantitative and qualitative social science research. The workshop is aimed at social researchers at all stages of their career - from new to experienced - and will cover key legal and ethical issues surrounding the managing and sharing of data in research with people (surveys, interviews, focus groups, observations and ethnography). The workshop will provide guidance and practical exercises and discussions focusing on:


• ethical and legal issues in data sharing and re-use
• handling and sharing confidential information and personal data
• informed consent and data sharing
• anonymising data

Content is based on advice and guidance provided by the UK Data Archive to researchers and aims to help researchers plan data management strategies for projects and consider data sharing and archiving as part of ethical review procedures.

Travel bursaries are available for postgraduate students. Contact datasharing@data-archive.ac.uk for further information.

Organisers: UK Data Archive, Research Data Management Support Services, University

On-line Tool for Data Management Plans

The Digital Curation Centre has released a trial version of a new tool to assist users in developing data management plans http://dmponline.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/ 

Funding bodies increasingly require their grant-holders to produce and maintain Data Management Plans (DMPs), both at the bid-preparation stage and after funding has been secured.


DMP Online is designed to enable researchers to build and edit DMPs with a view to the requirements stipulated by the major UK funders.

If you are applying to one of the funders that make specific data-related demands at the application stage (i.e. AHRC, BBSRC, ESRC, MRC, Wellcome) you will see the funder's requirements in the left-hand column. These have been mapped to the appropriate clauses in the DCC Checklist for a Data Management Plan. By answering these questions, you should de facto meet the funder's requirements. The tool also presents options for developing DMPs for funding bodies that do not have specific data related demands.

For US researchers a prototype based on the DCC tool is in development http://www.cdlib.org/uc3/datamanagement/dmpo.html