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Cambridge Data Week 2020 day 5: How do we peer review data? New sustainable and effective models
Cambridge Data Week 2020 was an event run by the Office of Scholarly Communication at Cambridge University Libraries from 23–27 November 2020. In a series of talks, panel discussions and interactive Q&A sessions, researchers, funders, publishers and other stakeholders explored and debated different approaches to research data management. This blog is part of a series summarising each event: The rest of the blogs comprising this series are as follows:Cambridge Data Week day 1 blogCambridge Data Week day 2 blogCambridge Data Weekday 3 blogCambridge Data Week day 4 blog Introduction Cambridge Data Week 2020 concluded on 27 November with a discussion between Dr Lauren Cadwallader (PLOS), Professor Stephen Eglen (University of Cambridge) and Kiera McNeice (Cambridge University Press) on models of data peer…
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Preparing for the end of COAF
The Open Access team are getting ready for the end of Charity Open Access Fund (COAF), which is due to dissolve on 30th September 2020. From 1st October 2020 onward, there are going to be changes to the block grants that we receive, and as a result, there will be a change in our policies on whether or not we can cover researchers’ article processing charges (APCs). We have outlined how researchers should go about securing funding for the APC’s below: Funder name Are article processing charges covered by a block grant? How do I pay for my article processing charge? UKRI Yes No change: researchers should continue to upload their paper to us for a funding decision. Wellcome Trust Yes No…
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Data sharing and reuse case study: the Mammographic Image Society database
The Mammographic Image Society (MIAS) database is a set of mammograms put together in 1992 by a consortium of UK academic institutions and archived on 8mm DAT tape, copies of which were made openly available and posted to applicants for a small administration fee. The mammograms themselves were curated from the UK National Breast Screening Programme, a major screening program that was established in the late 80s offering routine screening every three years to women aged between 50-64. The motivations for creating the database were to make a practical contribution to computer vision research – which sought to improve the ability of computers to interpret images – and to encourage…
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The Role of Open Data in Science Communication
Itamar Shatz has written a guest blog post for the Office of Scholarly Communication about how public trust in the scientific community increases when researchers make their data openly available to all. He also emphasizes that science communicators (e.g. press offices, journalists, publishers) have a responsibility to point attention directly at the primary source of the data. Itamar is a PhD candidate in the Department of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics at the University of Cambridge. He is also a member of the Cambridge Data Champion programme, having joined at the start of this year. He writes about science and philosophy that have practical applications at Effectiviology.com. It’s no secret that…
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Open Research at the University of Cambridge: What have we done so far?
At the start of 2019 the University of Cambridge announced its Position Statement on Open Research. This blog looks at what has been happening since then and the current plans for making research at Cambridge more open. Our Position In February 2019, the University of Cambridge set out its position on open research to support and encourage open practices throughout the research lifecycle for all research outputs. The Position Statement made clear that both the University and researchers have responsibility in this space and that there would be no one size fits all approach to how to be open. As part of forming a position on open research, the University…
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Towards widespread Open Research: insights from Cambridge Data Champions and beyond
The Cambridge Data Champions are an example of a community of volunteers engaged in promoting open research and good research data management (RDM). Currently entering its third year, the programme has attracted a total of 127 volunteers (86 current, 41 alumni) from diverse disciplinary backgrounds and positions. It continues to grow and has inspired similar initiatives at other universities within and outside the UK (Madsen, 2019). Dr Sacha Jones, Research Data Coordinator at the Office of Scholarly Communication, recently shared information about the programme at ‘FAIR Science: tricky problems and creative solutions’, an Open Science event held on 4th June 2019 at The Queen’s Medical Research Institute in Edinburgh, and…
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Cambridge Data Champions – reflections on an expanding community and strategies for 2019
The Cambridge Data Champions (DCs) advocate good Research Data Management (RDM) and Open Data practices to researchers locally in their departments, within Cambridge University in general, and sometimes further afield. They network with one another, exchange good methods of RDM, share ideas and, as a collective, reflect on current issues surrounding RDM, Open Data and researcher engagement, where a major shared goal is to establish best practices when it comes to research data. By attending bi-monthly forums facilitated by the Research Data Team, the DCs convene as a community, hear speakers presenting on relevant topics, and engage in workshops that will help them in their ‘championing’ activities. Following up from our latest blog which summarised how a workshop led to the creation of cartoon postcards as a new tool to add to the DCs’ resource kit for RDM…
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Perspectives on the Open future
‘More cash, more clarity and don’t make this compulsory’ is the take home message from a recent workshop held with Cambridge researchers on the question of Open Research. The recent session, called “An Open Future? How Cambridge is Responding to Challenges in the Open Landscape” was with a group of new Cambridge lecturers at a seminar organized by Pathways in Higher Education Practice. This event offered us an opportunity to go beyond the usual information we provide in our training workshops*. This session provided a unique opportunity to speak with researchers from various disciplines further along in their career who already had a basic knowledge of Open Access and Research Data sharing…
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Sustaining open research resources – a funder perspective
This is the second in a series of three blog posts which set out the perspectives of researchers, funders and universities on support for open resources. The first was Open Resources, who should pay? In this post, David Carr from the Open Research team at the Wellcome Trust provides the view of a research funder on the challenges of developing and sustaining the key infrastructures needed to enable open research. As a global research foundation, Wellcome is dedicated to ensuring that the outputs of the research we fund – including articles, data, software and materials – can be accessed and used in ways that maximise the benefits to health and…
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Open Resources: Who Should Pay?
This blog is the first in a series of three which considers the perspectives of researchers, funders and universities in relation to the support for open resources, coordinated and written by Dr Lauren Cadwallader. This post asks the question: What is the responsibility of national funders to research resources that are internationally important? In January 2017 the Office of Scholarly Communication and Wellcome Trust started an Open Research Pilot Project to try to understand how we could help our researchers work more openly and what barriers they faced with making their work open. One of the issues that is a common theme with the groups that we are working with is the issue…
