-
Cambridge Data Week 2020 day 4: Supporting researchers on data management – do we need a fairy godmother?
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 Week day 3 blogCambridge Data Week day 5 blog Introduction How should researchers’ data management activities and skills be supported? What are the data management responsibilities of the funder, the institution, the research group…
-
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…
-
Research Data at Cambridge – highlights of the year so far
By Dr Sacha Jones, Research Data Coordinator This year we have continued, as always, to provide support and services for researchers to help with their research data management and open data practices. So far in 2020, we have approved more than 230 datasets into our institutional repository, Apollo. This includes Apollo’s 2000th dataset on the impact of health warning labels on snack selection, which represents a shining example of reproducible research, involving the full gamut: preregistration, and sharing of consent forms, code, protocols, data. There are other studies that have sparked media interest for which the data are also openly available in Apollo, such as the data supporting research that reports the development of a wireless device that can convert sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into a carbon-neutral fuel. Or, data…
-
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…
-
In Conversation with the Wellcome Trust – sharing & managing research outputs
In July 2017, the Wellcome Trust updated their policy on the management and sharing of research outputs. This policy helps deliver Wellcome’s mission – to improve health for everyone by enabling great ideas to thrive. The University of Cambridge’s Research Data Management Facility invited Wellcome Trust to Cambridge to talk with their funded research community (and potential researchers) about what this updated policy means for them. On 5th December in the Gurdon Institute Tea Room, the Deputy Head of Scholarly Communication Dr Lauren Cadwallader, welcomed Robert Kiley, Head of Open Research, and David Carr, Open Research Programme Manager, from the Wellcome’s Open Research Team. This blog summarises the presentations from…
-
How do you know if you’re achieving cultural change?
On 15th November 2017, the University of Cambridge held its first research data management (RDM) conference, Engaging Researchers in Good Data Management. The Office of Scholarly Communication collaborated with SPARC Europe and Jisc, hosted the one-day event at St. Catherine’s College. In attendance were researchers, administrators, and librarians all sharing their experiences with promoting good RDM. Having a mixture of people from various disciplines and backgrounds allowed many different points of view on engaging researchers to be discussed. In the afternoon, the attendees split off into focus groups to concentrate on a number of nagging questions. Our group’s topic of discussion: How do we effectively measure cultural change in attitudes…
-
From data curators to intellectual entrepreneurs: observations from IFLA
In this blog post, Clair Castle, Librarian, University of Cambridge, Department of Chemistry reflects on her experience at the IFLA Satellite Meeting 2017 in Warsaw, Poland. Earlier this year I was invited by the Office of Scholarly Communication (OSC) at the University of Cambridge to present a paper on Data Curator’s Roles and Responsibilities: International and Interdisciplinary Perspectives. This was my first time writing a paper for a conference and presenting it; it was slightly daunting but exciting too! IFLA is the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, the international body that represents the interests of library and information services and their users. It celebrates its 90th birthday in 2017. This conference was a…
-
Engaging Researchers with Good Data Management: Perspectives from Engaged Individuals
We need to recognise good practice, engage researchers early in their career with research data management and use peers to talk to those who are not ‘onboard’. These were the messages five attendees at the Engaging Researchers in Good Data Management conference held on the 15th of November. The Data Champions and Research Support Ambassadors programmes are designed to increase confidence in providing support to researchers in issues around data management and all of scholarly communications respectively. Thanks to the generous support of the Arcadia Foundation, five places were made available to attend this event. In this blog post the three Data Champions and two Research Support Ambassadors who were awarded…
-
Benchmarking RDM Training
This blog reports on the progress of the international project to benchmark Research Data Management training across institutions. It is a collaboration of Cambridge Research Data Facility staff with international colleagues – a full list is at the bottom of the post. This is a reblog, the original appeared on 6 October 2017. How effective is your RDM training? When developing new training programmes, one often asks oneself a question about the quality of training. Is it good? How good is it? Trainers often develop feedback questionnaires and ask participants to evaluate their training. However, feedback gathered from participants attending courses does not answer the question how good was this…
-
Milestone -1000 datasets in Cambridge’s repository
Last week, Cambridge celebrated a huge milestone – the deposit of the 1000th dataset to our repository Apollo since the launch of the Research Data Facility in early 2015. This is the culmination of a huge amount of work by the team in the Office of Scholarly Communication, in terms of developing systems, workflows, policies and through an extensive advocacy campaign. The Research Data team have run 118 events over the past couple of years and published 39 blogs. In the past 12 months alone there have been 26000 downloads of the data in Apollo. In some cases the dataset has been downloaded many times – 170 – and the data…
