Opening the research data lifecycle: changing roles and responsibilities
Audience Researchers, Librarians, National Data Archives
Session Chair Liz Lyon, Director, UKOLN
Presenters
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Graham Pryor,
StORe Project Manager, University of Edinburgh
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Simon Coles, Manager, UK National Crystallography Service, Project
Manager
R4L
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Liz Lyon, Director,
UKOLN
Objectives of the session
Digital technologies increase the value of data as the currency of research
across many disciplines.This brings challenges, for example, in managing
this data, making it easily accessible, and linking it to other relevant
evidence of the research process (such as research papers). The
objectives of the session are to:
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outline some possible requirements in this area, based on
researchers' views across a broad range of disciplines
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describe in more detail one example where the lifecycle of research data
is being captured, aggregated and disseminated
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consider the resulting challenges, especially those concerning roles and
responsibilities of the various stakeholders involved
The JISC Digital
repositories programme has supported projects that have explored the
opening up of research data. Researchers across seven disciplines were
surveyed by the
StORe (Source-to-Output Repositories) project. They agreed with
the principle of open access, and said that dynamic links between data and
research papers would be useful; StORe is now building tools to
help. However, the range of types of data, and the ways in which they
are created, meant that support staff would find it difficult to be
effective in helping researchers share their data. In one department
though, eBank-UK project researchers have built a data repository in their
laboratory that is part of an integrated approach that also includes
an institutional repository of research papers and, eventually,
publishers' systems. The
R4L (Repository for the Laboratory) project uses the well-known ePrints
software to effectively capture and manage different types of data across
the whole chemistry domain, whilst respecting the many requirements of
active researchers.
Work, such as that described above, has implications for the roles and
responsibilities assumed by researchers, institutions (including
librarians) and national data archives. Liz Lyon has undertaken a
review of these implications, mapping the dataflows, roles and
responsibilities between institutional and national actors in curating
research data and linking between it and research papers. There is an
ongoing need for informed discussion between researchers and institutional
and national managers with responsibility for data curation on how
dataflows, roles and responsibilities might be best organised to serve
research both now and in the future.
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