scholarly journals Responding to Reality: Evolving Curation Practices and Infrastructure at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hoa Q. Luong ◽  
Colleen Fallaw ◽  
Genevieve Schmitt ◽  
Susan M. Braxton ◽  
Heidi Imker

Objective: The Illinois Data Bank provides Illinois researchers with the infrastructure to publish research data publicly. During a five-year review of the Research Data Service at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, it was recognized as the most useful service offering in the unit. Internal metrics are captured and used to monitor the growth, document curation workflows, and surface technical challenges faced as we assist our researchers. Here we present examples of these curation challenges and the solutions chosen to address them. Methods: Some Illinois Data Bank metrics are collected internally by within the system, but most of the curation metrics reported here are tracked separately in a Google spreadsheet. The curator logs required information after curation is complete for each dataset. While the data is sometimes ambiguous (e.g., depending on researcher uptake of suggested actions), our curation data provide a general understanding about our data repository and have been useful in assessing our workflows and services. These metrics also help prioritize development needs for the Illinois Data Bank. Results and Conclusions: The curatorial services polish and improve the datasets, which contributes to the spirit of data reuse. Although we continue to see challenges in our processes, curation makes a positive impact on datasets. Continued development and adaptation of the technical infrastructure allows for an ever-better experience for the curators and users. These improvements have helped our repository more effectively support the data sharing process by successfully fostering depositor engagement with curators to improve datasets and facilitating easy transfer of very large files.

2018 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Youngseek Kim ◽  
Seungahn Nah

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how data reuse experience, attitudinal beliefs, social norms, and resource factors influence internet researchers to share data with other researchers outside their teams. Design/methodology/approach An online survey was conducted to examine the extent to which data reuse experience, attitudinal beliefs, social norms, and resource factors predicted internet researchers’ data sharing intentions and behaviors. The theorized model was tested using a structural equation modeling technique to analyze a total of 201 survey responses from the Association of Internet Researchers mailing list. Findings Results show that data reuse experience significantly influenced participants’ perception of benefit from data sharing and participants’ norm of data sharing. Belief structures regarding data sharing, including perceived career benefit and risk, and perceived effort, had significant associations with attitude toward data sharing, leading internet researchers to have greater data sharing intentions and behavior. The results also reveal that researchers’ norms for data sharing had a direct effect on data sharing intention. Furthermore, the results indicate that, while the perceived availability of data repository did not yield a positive impact on data sharing intention, it has a significant, direct, positive impact on researchers’ data sharing behaviors. Research limitations/implications This study validated its novel theorized model based on the theory of planned behavior (TPB). The study showed a holistic picture of how different data sharing factors, including data reuse experience, attitudinal beliefs, social norms, and data repositories, influence internet researchers’ data sharing intentions and behaviors. Practical implications Data reuse experience, attitude toward and norm of data sharing, and the availability of data repository had either direct or indirect influence on internet researchers’ data sharing behaviors. Thus, professional associations, funding agencies, and academic institutions alike should promote academic cultures that value data sharing in order to create a virtuous cycle of reciprocity and encourage researchers to have positive attitudes toward/norms of data sharing; these cultures should be strengthened by the strong support of data repositories. Originality/value In line with prior scholarship concerning scientific data sharing, this study of internet researchers offers a map of scientific data sharing intentions and behaviors by examining the impacts of data reuse experience, attitudinal beliefs, social norms, and data repositories together.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 373-384
Author(s):  
Kirsty Merrett ◽  
Zosia Beckles ◽  
Stephen Gray ◽  
Debra Hiom ◽  
Kellie Snow ◽  
...  

Sharing data openly has become a straightforward process at the University of Bristol. The University’s top funders mandate or recommend data sharing as a condition of funding, and many publishers require access to research data to enable results of published articles to be verified. The University has provided a dedicated data repository to support this since 2015, and demand for open publication has risen steadily since its inception. However, an increasing number of requests for sharing data relate to data that has ethical, legal or commercial sensitivities and so cannot be published openly. Rather than discuss the wide-ranging ethical implications of data sharing, this practice paper will focus on the secure sharing of sensitive data that has ethical approval and, where required, has the necessary consent in place, from the perspective of an institution that has already decided to undertake the work inherent in sharing sensitive data. The specific purpose is to detail the workflow and administrative tasks integral in this and to highlight the types of challenges encountered.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonia Elisa Caregnato ◽  
Samile Andrea de Souza Vanz ◽  
Caterina Groposo Pavão ◽  
Paula Caroline Jardim Schifino Passos ◽  
Eduardo Borges ◽  
...  

RESUMO O artigo apresenta análise exploratória das práticas e das percepções a respeito do acesso aberto a dados de pesquisa embasada em dados coletados por meio de survey, realizada com pesquisadores brasileiros. As 4.676 respostas obtidas demonstram que, apesar do grande interesse pelo tema, evidenciado pela prevalência de variáveis relacionadas ao compartilhamento e ao uso de dados e aos repositórios institucionais, não há clareza por parte dos sujeitos sobre os principais tópicos relacionados. Conclui-se que, apesar da maioria dos pesquisadores afirmar que compartilha dados de pesquisa, a disponibilização desses dados de forma aberta e irrestrita ainda não é amplamente aceita.Palavras-chave: Dados Abertos de Pesquisa; Compartilhamento de Dados; Reuso de Dados.ABSTRACT This article presents an exploratory analysis of the practices and perceptions regarding open access to research data based on information collected by a survey with Brazilian researchers. The 4,676 responses show that, despite the great interest in the topic, evidenced by the prevalence of variables related to data sharing and use and to institutional repositories, there is no clarity on the part of the subjects on the main related topics. We conclude that, although the majority of the researchers share research data, the availability of this data in an open and unrestricted way is not yet widely accepted.Keywords: Open Research Data; Data Sharing; Data Reuse.


2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Weiland ◽  
Ina Dehnhard

See video of the presentation.The benefits of making research data permanently accessible through data archives is widely recognized: costs can be reduced by reusing existing data, research results can be compared and validated with results from archived studies, fraud can be more easily detected, and meta-analyses can be conducted. Apart from that, authors may gain recognition and reputation for producing the datasets. Since 2003, the accredited research data center PsychData (part of the Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information in Trier, Germany) documents and archives research data from all areas of psychology and related fields. In the beginning, the main focus was on datasets that provide a high potential for reuse, e.g. longitudinal studies, large-scale cross sectional studies, or studies that were conducted during historically unique conditions. Presently, more and more journal publishers and project funding agencies require researchers to archive their data and make them accessible for the scientific community. Therefore, PsychData also has to serve this need.In this presentation we report on our experiences in operating a discipline-specific research data archive in a domain where data sharing is met with considerable resistance. We will focus on the challenges for data sharing and data reuse in psychology, e.g.large amount of domain-specific knowledge necessary for data curationhigh costs for documenting the data because of a wide range on non-standardized measuressmall teams and little established infrastructures compared with the "big data" disciplinesstudies in psychology not designed for reuse (in contrast to the social sciences)data protectionresistance to sharing dataAt the end of the presentation, we will provide a brief outlook on DataWiz, a new project funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In this project, tools will be developed to support researchers in documenting their data during the research phase.


2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karlheinz Pappenberger

>> See video of presentation (33 min.)On 29th July 2014 the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Germany, has launched an e-science initiative to build up a powerful, efficient and innovative information infrastructure for all universities, research institutions and universities of applied science of the county of southwest Germany. With the overall budget of 3.7 million euro action plans within the five areas licensing, digitalization, research data management, open access and virtual research environments shall be worked out within the next years.Within this framework an 18-month project has been launched at the beginning of 2014 to evaluate the needs of services and support libraries and IT service centres should offer for researchers in the area of research data management. In this “bwFDM communities” named project full time key accounters have been established at all 9 universities of the county (Freiburg, Heidelberg, Hohenheim, Karlsruhe, Konstanz, Mannheim, Stuttgart, Tuebingen and Ulm; among them national and international highly ranked universities). The task of the key accounters is to identity concrete needs and requirements of all research groups working with research data (in a broad sense including all areas of science, social science and humanities) at each of the nine universities as well as possible solutions by conducting semi-structured personal interviews and documenting them in the form of user stories. As a result issues of importance and requirements will be identified, categorized and finalized to recommendations for concrete action plans.The presentation will give an overview of the first results of the project, thereby also highlighting the roles libraries and IT service centres are expected to play from the researcher´s point of view. Furthermore the presentation will point out the response of the University of Konstanz Library to the rising awareness of the importance of research data within the University Executive, showing the special efforts the University of Konstanz Library undertakes to support researchers in their research data management so far and to build up more and more expertise in the area of research data management. One step had been the set-up of a disciplinary data repository in the field of ornithology (Movebank data repository).


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iain Hrynaszkiewicz ◽  
James Harney ◽  
Lauren Cadwallader

PLOS has long supported Open Science. One of the ways in which we do so is via our stringent data availability policy established in 2014. Despite this policy, and more data sharing policies being introduced by other organizations, best practices for data sharing are adopted by a minority of researchers in their publications. Problems with effective research data sharing persist and these problems have been quantified by previous research as a lack of time, resources, incentives, and/or skills to share data. In this study we built on this research by investigating the importance of tasks associated with data sharing, and researchers’ satisfaction with their ability to complete these tasks. By investigating these factors we aimed to better understand opportunities for new or improved solutions for sharing data. In May-June 2020 we surveyed researchers from Europe and North America to rate tasks associated with data sharing on (i) their importance and (ii) their satisfaction with their ability to complete them. We received 728 completed and 667 partial responses. We calculated mean importance and satisfaction scores to highlight potential opportunities for new solutions to and compare different cohorts.Tasks relating to research impact, funder compliance, and credit had the highest importance scores. 52% of respondents reuse research data but the average satisfaction score for obtaining data for reuse was relatively low. Tasks associated with sharing data were rated somewhat important and respondents were reasonably well satisfied in their ability to accomplish them. Notably, this included tasks associated with best data sharing practice, such as use of data repositories. However, the most common method for sharing data was in fact via supplemental files with articles, which is not considered to be best practice.We presume that researchers are unlikely to seek new solutions to a problem or task that they are satisfied in their ability to accomplish, even if many do not attempt this task. This implies there are few opportunities for new solutions or tools to meet these researcher needs. Publishers can likely meet these needs for data sharing by working to seamlessly integrate existing solutions that reduce the effort or behaviour change involved in some tasks, and focusing on advocacy and education around the benefits of sharing data. There may however be opportunities - unmet researcher needs - in relation to better supporting data reuse, which could be met in part by strengthening data sharing policies of journals and publishers, and improving the discoverability of data associated with published articles.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rozália Zeller ◽  
Szabolcs Hoczopán ◽  
Gyula Nagy

Following the national and international trends in mid-2020 the Klebelsberg Kuno Library of the University of Szeged has also started to deal with the issue of research data management. After thorough self-training the library staff studied the Hungarian and international best practices of managing research data. We tried to assess the needs of the institutional research data management habits and the opinion of the researchers of SZTE with a comprehensive questionnaire. We compiled a comprehensive questionnaire to assess the needs of our researchers, learn what they’re thinking about RDM and what kind of practices regarding RDM already exist in the research community. By evaluating the questionnaire we have determined the areas in which the library could provide professional assistance where there was a real need among researchers. Keeping in mind the needs of the research community of University of Szeged we have decided to develop the following services: copyright consulting, RDM trainings for PhD students, theoretical and methodological assistance for RDM, write institutional FAIR data management recommendations. The last four services have been successfully implemented. We also wrote a feasibility study to assess the possibilities of developing our own institutional data repository.


Author(s):  
Yunqi Zhang ◽  
Hannah Lloyd-Jones ◽  
Robert Jagodzinski ◽  
Poliana Barbosa ◽  
Jason Lau ◽  
...  

IntroductionThe cultural revolution of data sharing is becoming a global movement. It allows for scientific replication and verification of research results, avoiding research duplication, and enabling greater transparency and knowledge mobilization with a relatively low cost. However, privacy protection and data security are critical concerns for human-subject related data sharing. Objectives and ApproachIn order to facilitate data sharing and engage various stakeholders to better inform policy and practice while protecting privacy, SAGE (Secondary Analysis to Generate Evidence) was established by PolicyWise for Children and Families. It is a collaborative data repository platform that connects stakeholders through secondary use of data. SAGE was built to link, manage, and share research data, community service data, and administrative data related to health and social well-being. Governance and technical processes are in place to ensure that data depositors are involved in decision-making, and data accessed by collaborators are secured and re-identification risks assessed. ResultsSAGE has been in operation for over a year. Through engagement with the research and non-profit communities, SAGE now offers ten data assets. Discovery is facilitated through well-documented metadata through NADA and Dataverse. Six new collaborative projects have been initiated through SAGE. SAGE is working actively with local non-profits to liberate data to generate evidence and collaborate with each other on common goals. SAGE has helped these organizations understand the legal and legislative barriers to data sharing, and build the technical capacity to further this goal. Discussions are underway with Alberta public entities on how SAGE can support the linkage and governance processes in the use of administrative data. Conclusion/ImplicationsSAGE is putting the governance processes and security practices in place to fill a need for a facilitated data sharing model for sensitive data. SAGE is supporting the cultural shift towards data sharing and reuse by fostering trust and collaboration among researchers, non-profit and government ministries.


2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 210-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Cox ◽  
Laurian Williamson

The Data Asset Framework methodology has evolved to provide a model for institutional surveys of researchers’ data practices and attitudes. At least 13 such studies have been published in the UK and internationally. The aim of this paper is to analyse the results from the 2014 DAF survey at the University of Sheffield and to reflect on the comparability of this with previous published studies. 432 researchers responded to the survey representing 8% of the target population. Researchers at Sheffield collect multiple types of data and a significant number have accumulated very large amounts of data. Data was backed up on a diverse basis. Only 25% of respondents had a DMP. Eighteen months after its creation most respondents were still not aware of the local research data management policy. Fortunately, most respondents were favourable to the idea of training in many aspects of RDM. Researchers had generally had no experience of sharing data, but attitudes were positive, both in terms of a significant minority seeing a lack of data sharing as an obstacle to the progress of research and also desire to reuse the data of others and share their own with a broad group of researchers. Comparison of the Sheffield results with those of other institutions is difficult particularly because of the divergence of questions asked in the different studies. Nevertheless, in terms of data practices and identifying training priorities there are common patterns. This institutional survey showed less positive attitudes to data sharing than the results of cross-institutional studies, such as conducted by Tenopir et al. (2011).


2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-170
Author(s):  
Jennifer Kaari

A Review of: Elsayed, A. M., & Saleh, E. I. (2018). Research data management and sharing among researchers in Arab universities: An exploratory study. IFLA Journal, 44(4), 281–299. https://doi.org/10.1177/0340035218785196 Abstract Objective – To investigate researchers’ practices and attitudes regarding research data management and data sharing. Design – Email survey. Setting – Universities in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. Subjects – Surveys were sent to 4,086 academic faculty researchers. Methods – The survey was emailed to faculty at three Arab universities, targeting faculty in the life sciences and engineering. The survey was created using Google Docs and remained open for five months. Participants were asked basic demographic questions, questions regarding their research data and metadata practices, and questions regarding their data sharing practices. Main Results – The authors received 337 responses, for a response rate of 8%. The results showed that 48.4% of respondents had a data management plan and that 97% were responsible for preserving their own data. Most respondents stored their research data on their personal storage devices. The authors found that 64.4% of respondents reported sharing their research data. Respondents most frequently shared their data by publishing in a data research journal, sharing through academic social networks such as ResearchGate, and providing data upon request to peers. Only 5.1% of respondents shared data through an open data repository.  Of those who did not share data, data privacy and confidentiality were the most common reasons cited. Of the respondents who did share their data, contributing to scientific progress and increased citation and visibility were the primary reasons for doing so. A total of 59.6% of respondents stated that they needed more training in research data management from their universities. Conclusion – The authors conclude that researchers at Arab universities are still primarily responsible for their own data and that data management planning is still a new concept to most researchers. For the most part, the researchers had a positive attitude toward data sharing, although depositing data in open repositories is still not a widespread practice. The authors conclude that in order to encourage strong data management practices and open data sharing among Arab university researchers, more training and institutional support is needed.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document