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In conversation with Ben Ryan from EPSRC
Cambridge University hosted Ben Ryan and Amanda Chmura from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) on Friday 15 May for a discussion about how the University is meeting the EPSRC expectations for sharing research data. We started the conversation with a demonstration of the services we offer our researchers including our Research Data Management website, and talked about the open data sessions and other training events we have been holding. So far we have managed to speak to 764 researchers about data sharing requirements (the numbers continue to grow). Managing expectations In 2011 EPSRC published nine key expectations on research data management. The expectations are directed principally at…
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Data management – one size does not fit all
As the Research Data Facilitator at the University of Cambridge, I am part of the team establishing a Research Data Management (RDM) Facility at the University. This blog is a note of my impressions from the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) meeting held in London on the 28th April 2015: Preparing Data for Deposit. As always, the DCC meeting was extremely useful for networking. I met with people at similar roles at other institutions. And again, the breakout sessions were invaluable – they allowed us to exchange precious experience, feedback gained and lessons learnt while developing RDM services. What could have been done better though is more appreciation for differences between universities. Unrealistic…
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Benchmarking the Cambridge RDM program
Cambridge University released its Research Data Management Policy Framework today. This is a good opportunity to assess whether Cambridge is fulfilling the 10 recommendations for libraries on how to get started in data management presented in the final report of the LIBER working group on E-Science / Research Data Management. Since publication in July 2012, this is the most downloaded item from the Association of European Research Libraries (LIBER) website. We list below the 10 recommendations and what Cambridge is doing to meet them. Benchmarking against RDM recommendations Offer research data management support, including data management plans for grant applications, intellectual property rights advice and information materials. Assist faculty with data management plans and the integration…
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Good news stories about data sharing?
We have been speaking to researchers around the University recently to discuss the expectations of their funders in relation to data management. This has raised the issue of how best to convince people this is a process that benefits society rather than a waste of time or just yet another thing they are being ‘forced to do’ – which is the perspective of some that we have spoken with. Policy requirements In general most funders require a Research Data Management Plan to be developed at the beginning of the project – and then adhered to. But the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) have upped the ante by introducing a policy requiring that…
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Interview with Nigel Shadbolt on The Life Scientific
Sir Nigel Shadbolt was interviewed on ‘The Life Scientific‘ this morning on BBC Radio4 about open data. The general discussion ranged from his background and what got him interested in this area. The data being discussed is more about government public data (such as medical information or cyclist black spots) than that generated in research projects, but an interesting conversation nonetheless. A couple of items that jumped out to me: 16:50 – When we talk about data, really we are talking about information … Data and information and knowledge are kinda different and mostly when we talk about open data we are talking about information. Data (such as a number) only becomes information if it is…
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A review of the RCUK review of implementation of its OA policy
The RCUK released its ‘Review of the implementation of the RCUK Policy on Open Access’ today and it makes interesting reading. First I should state that I think this is a good report, it seems well researched and balanced in tone and it is well written and laid out. Jisc also welcomes the report. Overall findings It seems that a ‘common factor’ amongst all of the people and groups interviewed was ‘a general acceptance and welcome given to the concept of open access’. However, the administrative effort to implement the policy and distribute the funds is significant. This is not helped by a level of confusion about different funding policies, particularly relating…
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Cambridge expenditure on APCs in 2014
Cambridge (along with many other institutions) were recently approached by Jisc to report on our article processing charges (APC) payments for 2014 as part of Jisc’s APC data collection project to address the Total Cost of Ownership of scholarly communication. Stuart Lawson, who is compiling these datasets has made the files available on Figshare. A couple of caveats – This dataset only contains APCs which were paid centrally; there will be many other APCs paid by the University of Cambridge and its staff which are not included in this dataset. Also we ended up listing the publications that were submitted to our system in 2014 because that was our starting point, rather…
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Evolution of Library Ethnography Studies – notes from talk
Today Susan Gibbons, the University Librarian & Deputy Provost at Yale University came to speak to the Cambridge Library community about her work for more than a decade on the ethnography of library users. The premise of the work Susan has done in collaboration with anthropologist Nancy Fried Foster is that libraries should get to know their users better rather than assume that ‘we know what they need’. They recognised that often we base our assumptions of what students experience and need on our own experiences as students which are clearly dated. The reality of a rapidly changing world is that we need to adapt to the changing needs of the students. It is…
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FORCE2015 observations & notes
This blog first appeared on the FORCE2015 website on the 14 January 2015 First a disclaimer. This blog is not an attempt to summarise everything that happened at FORCE2015 – I’ll leave that to others. The Twitter feed using #FORCE2015 contains an interesting side discussion, and the event was livestreamed with individual sessions live in two weeks here – so you can always check bits out for yourself. So this is a blog about the things that I as a researcher in scholarly communication working in university administration (with a nod to my previous life as a science communicator) found interesting. This is a small representative of the whole. This was…
