Category Archives: Tools

Research Data Resolutions

At the end of January we held our Research Data Resolutions event, where we invited researchers and anyone who supports research at the OU to join us for an open discussion of the issues around research data management (RDM).

What was the aim of the session?

We offer RDM support to the whole University through our website, training, repository and enquiries, but contact with researchers and those supporting them is largely limited to those who get in touch or attend our sessions, and often that it is to meet a particular need (which is great and we’re very happy to do), but we found ourselves wondering how could widen our knowledge of RDM at the OU?

It seems natural for us to focus on the mandated and defined goals of data management planning and meeting funder requirements – they are of course important – but are they the things that are most important to researchers? Are there other issues that we, as a support team, could know more about?

So, we decided to have an informal and open forum for an hour to hear what the important issues are at the University, and to encourage a sharing of experiences and ideas. If we learned anything that would help us understand better how OU research colleagues work, and how we can best support them, then all the better.

What did we talk about?

Without an agenda or structure, we set about seeing where the conversation took us, which touched on, and often returned to, several themes:

Data sharing

  • Why share? – publisher and funder requirements – what are the motivators?
  • What to share – selecting and preparing data to be shared – What’s relevant to support a particular publication? What will be useful to others? How much work is it to get it ready?
  • Sharing responsibly – How to effectively anonymise – The risks of data sharing when the potential of future technologies to aggregate data is unknown.

Informing participants and gaining consent

  • How to be clear and granular when communicating with participants how data will be gathered, stored and shared – The difficulty in balancing giving enough detail and being too complicated to understand and abide by.
  • Managing participants’ rights without compromising the research process.

Data management planning

  • Even if you know what you are doing you need to explain it well for others to understand.
  • The need for clear guidance and to know what’s expected.
  • How long should we retain data?

Storage and tools

  • Balancing convenience with security – Where is the data stored and backed-up? Is it compliant with data protection, and what about GDPR?
  • Can one system fit all? Can the university support everyone’s needs?
  • Using open source software to build our own tools – can we adapt existing software to give the functionality and security we want?

These are the main topics but even during the short time we had, we touched on many more too.

What did we learn?

As expected, there were certainly more questions than definitive answers, but the conversations illustrated a couple of things I think we already knew:

  • That research at the OU is varied and different disciplines, methods, and groups have different needs and require different solutions and approaches.
  • That everything is connected. The topics we talked about overlapped and connected in many ways.

It also indicated, from a relatively modestly sized group of ten, that there is an appetite to discuss RDM amongst OU colleagues.

It was certainly very helpful for us to hear how researchers work, and we hope those taking part enjoyed sharing their experiences too.

Next steps

As it was the first of this kind of event we’ll reflect on how it went and think whether we should do it again, and in what form? If you have any feedback, are interested in joining another session, or would like to suggest a particular research data issue for discussion, please get in touch – and watch this space!

And many thanks to everyone who took part and contributed to the discussion, either at the event or by sending their ideas in advance.

Written by Dan Crane, Research Support Librarian

Online training – Working with research data

Yesterday I ran an online training session on working with research data. This session covered:

  • how good data management can help you
  • information security
  • data storage options
  • file management
  • file naming
  • working with sensitive data

Please find below the slides from the webinar. OU staff and students can access a recording of the session on Adobe Connect. I will upload this recording to YouTube shortly so that the non-OU audience can also access it (update: this is now available on YouTube).

Here are the other sessions we’ll be delivering over the next couple of months:

These sessions will be run using Adobe Connect; joining instructions can be found on the event pages on My Learning Centre, but if in doubt please email us at library-research-support@open.ac.uk

If there’s any other training you’d like us to deliver online, feel free to let us know by emailing or commenting below

Online training: Writing successful data management plans

Last Friday I ran the first in our series of online training sessions. This morning’s session focused on Data Management Plans.

If you were unable to attend, here are the slides and a recording of the session is available on YouTube.

Here are the other sessions we’ll be delivering over the next couple of months:

These sessions will be run using Adobe Connect; joining instructions can be found on the event pages on My Learning Centre, but if in doubt please email us at library-research-support@open.ac.uk

If there’s any other training you’d like us to deliver online, feel free to let us know by emailing or commenting below.

What is an Electronic Lab Notebook, and why should I use one?

…so begins this recently published guide to Electronic Lab Notebooks (ELNs), from the Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge.

The short answer is that ELNS are “a software system for documenting your research work”, which can replicate a hard-copy notebook and add benefits of being searchable, shareable and having safeguards of security and backup.

kenyon_5.1.07_083 by ydylg https://flic.kr/p/2WbiUE

The guide was put together following a trial of various ELNs and provides a great source of information if you’ve either never heard of them before, are in the process of working out if they could work for you, or know you want to try one but don’t know which will best suit your work.

As with other technologies, there are many ELN products on the market, all of which do the same sort of thing but with a wealth of other features that vary between them.

To help make sense of all of this, the guide:

  • poses some key questions to ask yourself to decide which ELN would be the best fit for your work
  • lists the functions and features to consider when evaluating them
  • has a quick reference checklist of 25 current ELN products

There’s also a discussion forum where ELN users can share their experiences, and where prospective users can ask questions.

For further reading you can also find a blog about the ELN workshop held in Cambridge last year.

New online training resource for social scientists

The new CESSDA Expert tour guide on Data Management has been put together by a group of experts in research data management from across Europe who make up CESSDA – the Consortium of European Social Science Data Archives. This consortium includes 11 European social science data archives, including the UK Data Service.

This fantastic new resource aims to help social science researchers to make their data FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable). The guided tour takes you through 6 areas on a journey through the different stages of your project:

  1. Plan
  2. Organise and document
  3. Process
  4. Store
  5. Protect
  6. Archive and publish

As well as numerous examples and expert tips, the tour also includes specific information on data management practices in different European countries.

Curious to take the tour? Visit the online guide at cessda.eu/DMGuide

Focus on RDM tools: ORDO

The OU offers a range of tools and services which are designed to help researchers plan, manage, work with and share their research data. In these blogposts I’m going to focus on a few of these tools and services, including how to access and use them and how they can make your life easier.

This week: Open Research Data Online (ORDO)

Open Research Data Online (ORDO) is The Open University’s research data repository. Based on the Figshare platform, ORDO can be used for the storage of live research data, but is particularly useful for archiving and publishing research data once a project is completed. Data stored in ORDO will be kept for a minimum of ten years after project completion; published data will be given a DataCite digital object identifier (DOI), providing a permanent, citable web link to help you get recognition for your work.

We launched ORDO just over a year ago, and since then OU researchers have uploaded a range of different data types, from videos to tabular data to code to literature lists. ORDO accepts most file types and can visualize the majority of them in the browser. If you come across a file type which is not accepted, please let us know.

Datasets can be grouped into collections or projects and everything you upload to ORDO will be assigned a DOI  (Digital Object Identifier) to make it really easy to cite in your papers. One of our users told us:

“ORDO has proved incredibly useful for hosting sound clips generated by acoustic simulations and experiments, enabling us to provide a link to those clips within conference papers and journal publications.”

You can make data publicly available, confidential or embargoed and we encourage everyone who uploads their data to ORDO to employ a licence in order to clarify the conditions for re-use.

All OU research staff and students can use ORDO, login is via your OUCU, the first time you visit, simply click on the log in button in the top right-hand corner. For more guidance on using ORDO visit the ORDO pages on the Library Research Support website.

Many research funders and publishers are now requiring researchers to make the data underpinning publications available, and this is a secure, easy way to fulfill this requirement. All data submitted to ORDO will be checked and approved by specialist Library staff before being made public.

If you’re interested in using ORDO but aren’t sure where to start, email the Library Research Support team for advice.

Focus on RDM tools: data storage options

The OU offers a range of tools and services which are designed to help researchers plan, manage, work with and share their research data. In these blogposts I’m going to focus on a few of these tools and services, including how to access and use them and how they can make your life easier.

This week: IT options for storing data during research projects

Storage option?

One of the questions we are most frequently asked is around where project teams should store data during the lifetime of the project. The OU provides a number of facilities for storing data, however please remember that each project is individual so there is no one-size-fits-all solution for everyone and when starting out you’ll need to think carefully about which one works best for you. When considering where to store data, you should consider a number of factors, including but not limited to:

  • How much data do you have?
  • What file types will you be working with?
  • Are the data sensitive?
  • Who needs access? OU staff only? Researchers at other institutions? In the UK? Abroad?
  • How big is your team? What project management functions do you need?
  • Where do you need to access the data? At your desk? In the field?
  • What experience do your team have of using the chosen storage solution? Is any training needed/available?

Research your options

In order to help you to decide which data storage option works best for your project together with our colleagues in IT we have put together a matrix of some of the options  (ORDO, One Drive, OU networked file storage, SharePoint, cloud based services) available to OU researchers, weighing up the pros and cons of each one.

If you’d like more advice about where to store your data, or strategies for managing your data within your chosen system, please get in touch.

NB. Researchers within the STEM faculty have access to specialist IT support (internal link) which they should use in preference to centrally supported storage options outlined in the comparison table linked to above.

Focus on RDM tools: DMPOnline

The OU offers a range of tools and services which are designed to help researchers plan, manage, work with and share their research data. Over the coming weeks I’m going to focus on a few of these tools and services in these blogposts, including how to access and use them and how they can make your life easier.

This week: DMPOnline

Data Management Plans (DMPs) are often requested by funding bodies when applying for grants, and the University expects all research staff and students working on a project which collects, creates or uses data to have written a DMP, regardless of funder requirements (check out the OU’s Research Data Management Policy). This can be a daunting task, particularly if you’ve never written one before, but using DMPOnline can help you to structure your plan and to easily find the information and guidance you need to answer the questions.

DMPOnline is developed by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC), but has been customised by the OU especially for OU research staff and students. For guidance on how to create an account on DMPOnline, watch this short video.

DMPOnline offers a range of templates for different funders and an institutional template (which is recommended when your research is not funded by an external body, or if your funder doesn’t require a DMP). Each template has guidance associated with the individual questions, written by the DCC, the OU and the funder (if applicable). You can choose to turn the DCC guidance on or off; we recommend that you keep it on because there are lots of useful hints and tips in there.

Once you’ve written your plan you can either share it (with collaborators or with the Library for review) or export it into a range of file types. One of the neat things about the tool is that it will never let you go over the page limit specified by any given funder, so you know that the format you export the plan in will always be compliant.

Why not go and check DMPOnline out for yourself? If you need any help using it, would like us to review your DMP or if you’ve used the tool and would like to give us some feedback about it, send us an email.

 
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