Engaging with students and

researchers: the case of the

social sciences

Louise Corti

Collections Development and Producer Relations

UK Data Service

University of Essex

CILIP Executive Briefing on RDM

London

20 May 2014

What is the UK Data Service?

• a comprehensive resource funded by the

Economic and Social Research Council

(ESRC)

• a single point of access to a wide range of

digital research data

• facilitate high quality social and economic

research and education

• offer support, training and guidance

throughout the data lifecycle

What does the UK Data Service do?

• put together a collection of the most valuable data and

enhance these over time

• preserve data in the long term for future research

purposes

• make the data and documentation available for reuse

• provide support and training for data creators and users

• provide information about how data are used

• offer easy access through website

UK Data Service

ukdataservice.ac.uk

Integrates ESDS, Survey

Question Bank and

Census.ac.uk

Data access

• web access to data and metadata

• data are freely available for use by all. Charges may apply for commercial use.

• data available under 3 access levels: OPEN, SAFEGUARDED, CONTROLLED

• data supplied in a variety of formats

• statistical package formats (e.g. SPSS, Stata) • databases and spreadsheets • word processed documents, PDF documents etc.

• some data available via instant data browsing

Online instant data browsing

Nesstar social surveys

UKDS.stat aggregate global indicators

(some restrictions to HE/FE)

InFUSE aggregate census data

QualiBank qualitative data

APIs are coming soon!

Nesstar: GHS - Age started smoking

Nesstar: mapping OLS 2013

Rich resource discovery

discover.ukdataservice.ac.uk/

User support and resources

• help desk, individual user support

• promotional events/ workshops / webinars

• video introductions and tutorials

• user guides/ thematic guides

• case studies of use

• teaching data and resources, often co-created

• education and support on creating and managing

data

Some statistics about our Service

Data for research and teaching purposes, used in all

sectors and by many different disciplines

• 6,000 datasets in the collection

• 400 new datasets and new editions added within

last 12 months

• 25,000 registered users

• 60,000 downloads worldwide per annum

• 4000+ user support queries per annum

• many queries from ESRC award holders

Sister data archives

Adapted OAIS Functional Model (ISO 14721)

Pre-Ingest

Access (Data)

(Support)

UK Data Archive - digital data preservation

• operate in-house curation and preservation services

• offer self-upload data facility through ReShare

• certified to ISO27001 for Information Security

• Data Seal of Approval (DSA) accredited

• undertake long-term data curation and preservation

• deeply involved in international preservation planning and accreditation activities

www.data-archive.ac.uk/curate

Supporting researchers in RDM and sharing

• Significant experience of supporting research data creators of

social science data and related disciplines

• Our best practice approaches to making data shareable are

based on:

• challenges faced by researchers in preparing and sharing data

• our own handling of research data – quantitative and qualitative

• Various dedicated grants to produce support materials

• RELU-DSS Cross-council Research Programme

• JISC MRD I: ESRC Research Centres

• ESRC Researcher Development Initiative

• JISC MRD II: Essex infrastructure

ESRC Research Data Policy support

• UK Data Archive co-developed the Data Policy for the

ESRC in 1995

• UK Data Archive/Service operationalise the Policy

• guidance and advice service for jes-applicants

• training for data creators. Some areas need more focus,

e.g. ethics, confidentiality, security

• monitor compliance and trouble-shoot ‘difficult’ data

sharing issues

• archive and provide access to ESRC data at Essex

Wider advice and training

• Grant applicants

• Grant and DMP reviewers

• Award holders

• Data managers and centre

administrators

• Increasingly research administrators,

ARMA members

• Repository administrators and managers

Pedagogical approach

• Guidance must speak the language of research - written by

researchers for researchers

• Authors all experiences researchers with post graduate

degrees in social sciences /humanities

• Light weight applied introductions from a social science

researcher perspective

• Grounded exercises

• using realistic scenarios and real-life projects and data

• some individual, some group work

• must try to make dull bits fun!

Main areas

• The importance of managing and sharing research data

• The research data lifecycle

• Research data management planning

• Documenting and providing context for data

• Formatting and organizing data

• Storing and transferring data

• Legal and ethical issues in sharing data

• Rights relating to research data

• Collaborative research: strategies for research teams and research managers

• Making use of other people’s research data: opportunities and limitations

• Publishing and citing research data

•

Popular workshop topics for researchers

• Data management plans

• Legal and ethical aspects of managing and sharing

confidential research data

• Developing agreements for obtaining informed consent

• Anonymisation techniques and access regulations

• Contextualising and describing research data

Discussion: research scenario Climate change research on the public understanding of climate change and associated

risks. Understanding what people think about climate change is important for developing

better communication and dialogue between the science community, policy makers and the

public.

Research consists of:

• online survey with 2000 invited members of the public to assess their understanding of

climate change and climate change risks, as well as their sources of information

• interviews with 20 key stakeholders in climate policy and science communication

• qualitative content analysis of secondary data taken from newspapers and popular

science journals, evaluating reporting about climate change in the media

• Data resulting from the online survey will be transferred to SPSS for analysis.

• Interviews will be audio-recorded, stored in MP3, then transcribed into MS Word by a

professional transcriber. Transcripts will be imported into NVivo for content analysis.

• Secondary textual data from newspapers and journals will be copied/pasted as MS Word

(if digital) or scanned as TIFF (if hardcopy) and imported into NVivo for content analysis.

Task: plan and cost data management

The adapting landscape

• Established UK discipline-specific Data Centres, some

funded by major funders, e.g. ESRC, NERC supporting

their Research Data Policies

• Growing number of local institutional data management

policies and data repositories

• New Jisc infrastructure role

• How do these all play together to maximise investment?

Data sharing - a shared responsibility

• Funders: provide policies, mandates and some

infrastructure funding. How to cost longer term curation

• Funded researchers: create, manage and use data

• Departments/centres: provide local support and some

infrastructure

• Institutions: provide a supporting framework

• grant-application and funding support

• research integrity framework

• IT and data storage facilities

• Data management guidance and training

• Clarify roles and responsibilities early on

Division of labour and partnership

• Where do research data funded by ESRC data go? Data Policy specifies UK Data Service but local maybe more suitable

• (Some) institutions want to hold long-tail data • very low use of long-tail data – cost benefit analysis

• huge investment in data infrastructure by a few

• none by others – looking for shared services/ economies of scale

• Possible forthcoming period of confusion for award holders!

• Jisc Research Data Registry could help resource discovery

Wider approaches – research focussed

• Develop practical strategies to embed data management

and sharing into research practices

• Offer tried and tested shared tools and templates

• Data centres offer disciplinary training, resources and

bespoke advice - roadshows

• Shared Repository infrastructure services for smaller

HEIs. Consortia or Jisc?

Areas where IRs most likely need help

• Appraising social science data • why are you keeping these data? Appraisal tool

• how much effort to ingest and provide access to?

• Quality assessment of social science data • disclosure review - anonymisation or controlled access?

• data integrity, formats and data documentation

• metadata creation and quality – DDI compatible

• RECs on research ethics, disclosure prior to collection

• Research Offices – costing data management and archiving, help with complex DMPs

• In house preservation or contracted out • ‘Trusted Digital Repository’, Data Seal of Approval

• Archivum-type services

How to cost RDM ?

Our data management costing tool

Low cost repository solution - Eprints and

ReCollect

• Easy to deploy and free, yet full featured solution

• EPrints with the ReCollect plugin installed

• plugin transforms EPrints vanilla into data repository with one

click

• standards-compliant metadata, redesigned for presenting

complex collections

• developed by Jisc Research Data @Essex project, but now a

community project

• download via EPrints install or http://bazaar.eprints.org/280/

Eprints and ReCollect in use

• UK Data Service ReShare

• University of Glasgow

• University of Leeds

• University of Southampton

• Goldsmiths, University of London

• London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

• University of East London

• Western Balkan countries (shared infrastructure)

• Public version of underlying metadata profile

http://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/

• A self deposit repository for publishing data from social

science research (and related disciplines), within scope of our

Collections Development Policy

• The pathway for ESRC project data offered to UK Data

Service

• Harvest grant info from RCUK Gateway to Research

• Checks carried out by a repository admin before data

published

• Choice of licences

ESRC UK Data Service ReShare

A quality stamp for ESRC data?

• We advocate a ‘quality stamp’ for ESRC-funded social science data that has been processed according to data archival standards

• Data Review for ReShare collections

• Who does the QA?

• role of the repository manager is crucial

• users rating system – useful?

• Will be looking for partners to trial Data Review protocol

• Roll out guidance/ training and showcase ‘awards’

Questions

Contact details

datasharing@ukdataservice.ac.uk

http://ukdataservice.ac.uk/manage-data.aspx