Talk to the Royal Society of Chemistry, Chemical Information and Computer Applications Group conference - Measurement, Information and Innovation: Digital Disruption in the Chemical Sciences. Tuesday 20th October 2015, RSC, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London

1. The purpose, practicalities, pitfalls
and policies of managing and
sharing data in the UK
AAMG-CICAG Measurement,
Information and Innovation meeting
20 October 2015
Dr Danny Kingsley

2. Can we cover this in 15 minutes
(allowing 5 min for questions?)
• UK policy landscape
• Places to share data
• What are we trying to achieve?
• Let’s start at the beginning
• Basics of Research Data Management
• Issues with sharing (or not) data

3. The data policy landscape
Lots of slightly different rules in the UK

4. Policies
• Funder
– RCUK Common Principles on Data Policy
• Government
– Draft Concordat on Open Research Data released by the RCUK
for consultation which ended on 28 September
• http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/opendata/
– Cambridge coordinated a joint response with other universities
• https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=285
• Publishers
• Institutional
– Cambridge University Research Data Management Policy
Framework. http://www.data.cam.ac.uk/university-policy

5. RCUK Common Principles on Data
–“Publicly funded research data are
a public good (…), which should be
made openly available with as few
restrictions as possible”
–http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/research/datapolicy
/

6. The principles might be common…

7. What the researcher hears
From Bill Hubbard Getting the rights right: when policies collide
http://www.slideshare.net/UKSG/hubbard-uksg-may2015-public

8. Places to share data
There are lots of options

9. Open repositories
• (some are free, some charge)

10. Disciplinary specific repositories
• Gene Expression Omnibus
– Public function genomics data repository
• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/geo/
• arXiv
– e-prints in Physics, Mathematics, Computer Science, Quantitative
Biology, Quantitative Finance and Statistics
• http://arxiv.org/
• Oxford Text Archive
– Literary and linguistic texts for higher education
• http://ota.ox.ac.uk/
• UK Data Service
– Social science data
• http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/
• Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) run 7 repositories
• http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/sites/data/

11. Journals
• Either as supplementary data, or in data-only
journals
– PLOS data sharing policy (Dec 2013)
• https://www.plos.org/plos-data-policy-faq/
– Nature’s journal Scientific Data
• http://www.nature.com/sdata/about

12. We are a long way from there

13. So what’s it all about then?
What are we actually trying to
achieve with open data policies?

14. In conversation with Ben Ryan EPSRC
• Please share:
– the data that underpins publications
– the data that validates research findings
– the data that is worth keeping
• The default position is ‘data should be open’
• Published research findings should be testable
• Maximise the impact of publicly funded research
• Maintain public trust in science and research
• They are trying to create a new research culture
• https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=151

15. Responses to data sharing policies
• What’s the minimum we can get away with?
• This is crap
• ‘They’ are just doing this because ‘they’ can
• But it will take a huge effort to get the data in
a useable form
• No-one will look at it
• What a waste of time

16. Data excuse bingo

17. We are trying to start at the end
We should begin at the beginning - a
stitch in time and all that…

18. In conversation with Michael Ball BBSRC
• Disciplines themselves must establish ways of
dealing with data
– This is the beginning of an ongoing process
• Researchers need to consider how to deal
with data from the beginning of a research
project
• You can ask for money to manage data in the
grant application
• https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/?p=337

19. Research data management
• The practice of sharing data requires the data
to be:
– Accessible
– Intelligible
– Assessable
– Reusable

20. Some of it is really obvious
• How many of you:
– Use a file naming protocol?
– Ensure all your laptops are backed up?
– Have written a data management plan for your
current project?
– Determined who in the team owns the data?
• PS: this last one REALLY matters

21. Skillsets required for managing and
curating data
http://www.dcc.ac.uk/sites/default/files/documents/RDMF/RDMF2/coreSkillsDiagram.gif

22. Lots of jobs…

23. Issues with sharing data
Both with sharing and not sharing

24. Issues raised by researchers
• There is a very real concern that the UK will
become unattractive for collaborations
• Researchers discussing changing the type of
research being done to reduce the amount of
data being produced
• There is discussion in some circles whether
applying for EPSRC funding is worth the hassle

25. Consequences of not sharing data
• Medicine
– Having the data publicly available in two trials of deworming pills
demonstrated that a population wide deworming program did not improve
school performance
– http://www.buzzfeed.com/bengoldacre/deworming-trials
• Economics
– A study widely cited to justify budget cutting in the US had a mistake in the
calculations which was only revealed when the Excel file was released
– http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2013-04-18/faq-reinhart-rogoff-and-
the-excel-error-that-changed-history
• Physics
– It took 12.5 years to withdraw Jan Hendrik Schon’s work on ‘organic
semiconductors’ because the reviewers were unable to replicate the results
without access to the original data or lab books
– http://www.science20.com/science_20/jan_hendrik_sch%C3%B6n_world_cla
ss_physics_fraud_gets_last_laugh_whole_book_about_himself

26. Questions?
Dr Danny Kingsley
Head of Scholarly Communication
University of Cambridge
Email: dak45@cam.ac.uk
Blog: https://unlockingresearch.blog.lib.cam.ac.uk/
Website: http://osc.cam.ac.uk
Twitter: @dannykay68