Martin Donnelly

1. “Where do you begin in this?”
d
Raising institutional data
management capacity with the DCC
Martin Donnelly
Digital Curation Centre
University of Edinburgh
Research Data Access and Preservation summit
Baltimore, MD – 4 April 2013

2. 1. About the
- Digital Curation Centre, est. 2004
- Three partners: Edinburgh, Glasgow and Bath
- Primary funder is JISC
Helping to build capacity, capability and
skills in data management and curation
across the UK’s higher education
research community
- DCC Phase 3 Business Plan
www.dcc.ac.uk

3. 2. Institutional Engagement programme
overview
With funding from HEFCE we’ve…
• Worked intensively with c. 20 HEIs to increase RDM capability
– 60 days of effort per HEI drawn from a mix of DCC staff
– Deploy DCC and external tools, approaches and best practice
• Variable support based on institutional wants/needs
– Institution agrees a schedule of work with the DCC, and each assigns a primary
contact / programme manager
• Lessons and examples will be shared with the community (synthesis
report currently in preparation)
www.dcc.ac.uk/community/institutional-engagements

4. 3. Policies and other pressures
2011 was a year of mandates and modernisation…
• RCUK - Common Principles on Research Data Policy
• ESRC - requirement for data management plans (and
subsequent analysis of plans received)
• EPSRC - Policy Framework on Research Data
• HEFCE - Universities Modernisation Fund and DCC

5. Government pressure…
6.9 The Research Councils expect the researchers they fund to
deposit published articles or conference proceedings in an open
access repository at or around the time of publication. But this
practice is unevenly enforced. Therefore, as an immediate step,
we have asked the Research Councils to ensure the researchers
they fund fulfil the current requirements. Additionally, the
Research Councils have now agreed to invest £2 million in the
development, by 2013, of a UK ‘Gateway to Research’. In the
first instance this will allow ready access to Research Council
funded research information and related data but it will be
designed so that it can also include research funded by others in
due course. The Research Councils will work with their partners
and users to ensure information is presented in a readily
reusable form, using common formats and open standards.
http://www.bis.gov.uk/assets/biscore/innovation/docs/i/11-
1387-innovation-and-research-strategy-for-growth.pdf

6. • Public good
• Preservation
• Discovery
• Confidentiality
• First use
• Citation
• Public funding

7. ESRC DMP REQUIREMENTS
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………..
• DMP requirement introduced April 2011
• Requirements & guidance developed by UK Data Archive & ESRC
• DMP topics:
• assessment of existing data that could be used for the
research
• information on new data that will be created
• quality assurance of data
• back-up and security of data
• expected difficulties in data sharing, e.g. ethical or legal
issues
• rights (copyright and Intellectual Property rights)
• data management responsibilities
• preparation of data for sharing and archiving
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………..…
UK DATA ARCHIVE

8. ESRC REVIEW OF DMPs
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….……………………………..
DMP Review 2012, UK Data Archive, Research Data Management
Support Team
• evaluated quality of random sample of 24 DMPs
• scored each topic: 1=insufficient; 2=sufficient; 3=excellent
Findings
• Average quality score: 17 (9-23)
• 7 DMPs (29 %) < 16; 4 DMPs (17 %) < 12
• On average good to excellent information on assessing existing
data (average score of 2.4 )
• Poorest information:
• copyright and IPR / preparing data for sharing and archiving
• Score = 1 (insufficient information provided) most common
for copyright (7 plans), data management responsibilities (5
plans) and data preparation (5 plans)
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….…………………………..…
UK DATA ARCHIVE

9. The odd one out. EPSRC expects all the
institutions it funds…
a. to develop a roadmap that aligns their
policies and processes with EPSRC’s
expectations by 1st May 2012
b. to be fully compliant with these expectations
by 1st May 2015
http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/about/standards/researchdata/Pages/exp
ectations.aspx (April 2011)

10. Quick plug: RDMF, 25 April 2013
- Special event, involving representatives of several RCUK funders
- Outcomes will be posted to the DCC website after the event, and
no doubt Tweeted etc

11. 4. Institutional Engagement programme:
outcomes and lessons learned

12. University Class Representative group Senior management champion
Aberystwyth (joined by Bangor) Red brick Welsh Confederation Senior PVC
Bath Plate glass
The first East London Post 1992 Million+ [Senior management team strategic
initiative]
Edinburgh Ancient Russell Group Vice Principal Knowledge Management
programme: Glasgow Ancient Russell Group Vice-Principal for Research & Enterprise
a balanced Hull
Loughborough
Red brick
Plate glass 1994
PVC Research
cohort London School of Economics
Northampton
Red brick
Post 1992
Russell Group
Million+ Executive Dean for Science &
Technology
Open University Distance University Alliance
Oxford Brookes Post 1992 University Alliance PVC Research
Queen Mary University London Red brick Russell Group Vice-Principal for Research and
International Affairs
Queen’s University Belfast Red brick Russell Group
Salford Plate glass University Alliance
Sheffield (became White Rose Red brick Russell Group
Consortium)
St Andrews Ancient 1994
Stirling Plate glass Deputy Principal
Surrey Plate glass 1994 Director of Traded Services and Business
Support
University of East Anglia Plate glass 1994
University of the Arts London Post 1992
Warwick Plate glass Russell Group

13. A cycle of business process redesign
• Input from three perspectives
1. Research practice
2. Research support
3. Management
• Unfamiliar collaborations and groups
• Need for authority, clarity and drive
• Focus on desirability, achievability and
sustainability

14. The IE teams
Guidance
50% have Major support
Team leaders
senior • Library – 7
academic • Library – 11
• Research office – 2 DCC
champions • Research
office – 8 • ITS – 6 • Expert
• ITS – 2 • Records knowledge
management – 2 • Facilitation
• Repository • Technical
management – 1 advice
Ownership

15. Developing institutional infrastructure
Four phases
Audits Business • Initiate change
Awareness
Steering plans or • Diagnose data
raising Data clinics
Group and roadmaps practices
Analysis of Pilot groups • Reengineer roles
roadmap Customised • Introduce
practice Training sustainable
DMP services

16. IE activities
Assessing needs Piloting tools
RDM roadmaps
Policy Policy
development implementation

17. Quick wins: planning and storage
• Six of the seven • Storage, focusing on
research councils – providing sufficient
require DMPs capacity for research data
• Create tailored / – tools to enable sharing
with collaborators
branded versions of
– advice on the selection of
DMPonline with
options (e.g. onsite
– templates / boilerplate repository, national
responses services, cloud services)
– links to local web pages, – matchmaking with
training materials, relevant projects
support contacts

18. Imperatives of guidance and training
Training features in just over ¼ of the engagements…
Focus on
Provide sustainability:
Data
short, simple • Disciplinary
management Use tried
guidance courses for
can seem and tested
that reflects postgraduate
arcane and resources
and students
overwhelmingly (e.g. DC101)
promotes • Reskilling of
technical
local support professional
support staff

19. IEs as case studies of HEIs
• Universities are generally in the early
stages of scoping RDM needs and
obtaining benchmarks
• Few have the effective components for
RDM services or infrastructure in place
Interim • More concerned with meeting funder
observations expectations rather than a desire for
sustainable infrastructure
• There is confusion over the sequence for
producing strategies, plans and policies
• The gulf between early adopters and late
entrants is widening

20. The future…
• Still more demand than the DCC can meet
• Realigning our programme to reflect the
widening spectrum of need, offering
– specific curation techniques to enable infrastructure
development
– sociotechnical support, from advocacy to skills
reengineering to organisational repositioning
• DCC team engaged as expert hands-on
consultants delivering specific tasks
• HEIs will be required to demonstrate
commitment to maintain the engagement

21. Thank You
- Tell us a story, sir.
- Oh, do, sir, a ghoststory.
- Where do you begin in this? Stephen
asked, opening another book.
- Weep no more, Comyn said.
- Go on then, Talbot.
- And the story, sir?
- After, Stephen said. Go on, Talbot.
@mkdDCC
Joyce, J. (1922) Ulysses
www.dcc.ac.uk
martin.donnelly@ed.ac.uk
Thanks to Graham Pryor (DCC) and Veerle Van den Eynden (UK Data Archive) for use of their slides