The dawn of a new JISC MRD programme - Day I

  After a successful first stage of the JISC Managing Research Data (MRD) Programme (2009-2011), a second phase of JISC MRD was launched yesterday at the NCSL Conference Centre in Nottingham, along a 2-day event that will continue today. JISC MRD02 Programme includes 27 projects classified in three different strands:

Strand A. Research Data Management Infrastructure: 17 projects, to be completed from Mar to Jul 2013, comprising Institutional Pilot projects, Institutional Embedding and Transition to Service projects, Disciplinary projects for creative arts and archaeology, and a Metadata project,

Strand B. RDM Planning: 8 projects running until Mar 2012, aiming to design and implement data management plans and supporting services for researchers,

Strand C. Enhancing DMPOnline projects: 2 projects, aiming to customize and enhance the DCC DMPOnline Tool to improve its interaction with institutional/ disciplinary information systems).

It is worth noting that a number of funded RDM projects along this 2nd programme stage are building upon previous pilot work (projects carried out along JISC MRD programme 2007-2011) in order to for instance extend and embed data management services accross the whole institution.

On describing the research data management programme, Simon Hodson, JISC MRD programme manager mentioned there will be two further JISC MRD calls as early as Jan 2012, dealing with:

- Research data publications, aiming to build partnerships among involved stakeholders and encouraging data citation and publication,

- RDM Train, aiming to design and implement data management training strategies for specific disciplines and support roles (including librarians), to be performed by linking to professional bodies.

Emphasis will also be made along this 2nd JISC MRD programme stage on evidence gahering for project benefits and impact. A session devoted to these issues will be held on Dec 2nd, with practical work with both the Benefits Framework Tool and the Value Chain Impacts Tool. Developing metrics for measuring project impact is a specific programme goal along this 2nd implementation stage.

Project blogging

Another JISCMRD02 main objective -and closely related to impact measurement- is promotion of project dissemination and interaction among themselves and with the broader community via blogging. A specific presentation on 'blogging practices to support project work' was delivered for the purpose by Brian Kelly, UKOLN. The presentation highlighted the relevance of publishing project blogposts as an alternative means of expression to writing research papers or code, and engaged the audience in finding shared views regarding potential benefits blogging may bring to RDM projects, also providing some useful technical advice along the way.

Subsequent discussion focused on pros and cons of blogging as a communication technique (both from regular bloggers' and researchers' viewpoint), as well as on potential advantages of JISCMRD project blog aggregation, with a common RSS feed embedded back into the JISC site.

Parallel sessions and poster-session networking

Two parallel sessions came afterwards, dealing with two principal RDM issues: a first one on DCC Tools, introducing Data Asset Framework (DAF), DMPOnline and CARDIO, and summarized by Paul Stainthorp, U Lincoln, on his JISCMRD02 Day I blogpost.

The 2nd parallel session dealt with UMF Tools and related RDM projects. This 2nd session featured presentations by John Milner on JANET Brokerage and Andy Powell on Eduserv Cloud Pilot, along which the strategy for Academic Cloud service implementation was described - based on the "work with the willing" driving line. The Dynamic Purchasing System (DPS) -originally developed for utilities such as water or light- will be re-used as purchasing framework for cloud-related services. Regarding Eduserv, a 2-month 'introductory tier' will be available (just for institutions) along the service gradual implementation (storage being currently single-site, with no backups at this pilot stage, though there are plans for offering tape backup for part of the stored infrastructure).

After an interesting Q&A time, in which backup was suggested to be an absolute requirement for the success of the initiative and there were questions on various Eduserv use mode details (such as the possibility of using departmental orders/purchase order instead of credit cards for academic use), five projects from the UMF strand were briefly presented which are already working either based on a SaaS approach or in the cloud, or both: these were BRISSkit (Jonathan Tedds, U Leicester), DataFlow (David Shotton, U Oxford), Smart Research Framework (or ELB software as a service, Tim Parkinson, U Southampton), VIDaaS and YouShare Projects. Slides for these presentations will shortly be available and will be linked from here.

Finally, Day I official programme ended with a poster session and networking event, which meant a really good opportunity for RDM projects to interact with each other and with 'fellow travellers'. Synergies among projects became quite evident when having all them displayed together on a set of panels, and having their representatives available and willing to discuss each project aims, challenges and similarities to others offered a very good chance to get the general picture along with the details, as well as for establishing inter-project liasons that went well over closure time.

STM research data management and the Quixote Project

  A one-day seminar was held yesterday Thu Aug 25th at the Zaragoza Scientific Center for Advanced Modeling (ZCAM) on research data management and the Quixote Project for data management in Computational Chemistry. The session, entitled “Research data management: The experience of the Quixote project for Quantum Chemistry data. Can it be extended into a collection of research data management repositories?”, was attended by a rather diverse group of researchers (both computational chemists and from other disciplines) and repository managers, aiming to learn about research data management initiatives and specifically about the progress of the Quixote Project, in which two researchers from the University of Zaragoza and the CSIC Institute of Physical Chemistry "Rocasolano" are involved.

The Quixote Project (see paper "The Quixote project: Collaborative and Open Quantum Chemistry data management in the Internet age", in press with the J Chem Inf) is developing the infrastructure required to convert output from a number of different molecular quantum chemistry (QC) packages -such as NWChem or Gaussian- to a common semantically rich, machine-readable format and to build repositories of QC data results.

The session started with an introduction to "STM Research data management initiatives in Spain and abroad" delivered by SONEX member Pablo de Castro, in which different national approaches to RDM were presented based mainly on the information collected at the JISC MRD Programme International Workshop held last March in Birmingham.

Different approaches to data management taken from the JISC and SURF Foundation were discussed at Q&A time: for the JISC, datasets are assets per se, regardless of where they are attached to a research paper as supplementary material, whereas the 'Enhanced publication' approach from the SURF Foundation in the Netherlands, regards datasets mainly as digital objects connected to research publications. Some emphasis was made on the fact that the upcoming OpenAIREPlus European project shares the SURF approach.

Two presentations on the Quixote Project followed, "From Databases in QC 2010, ZCAM, Sep 2010 onwards: a brief history of Quixote" by Jorge Estrada and "The Quixote Project: a pioneering work in managing Computational Chemistry research data" by Pablo Echenique. Both Quixote project members explained the results, the challenges and the cooperation opportunities of this non-specifically-funded RDM project, engaging in a fruitful dialogue with the attending researchers and repository managers on how the QC data assets could be best managed.

Finally Peter Murray-Rust closed the morning interventions with some reflections on the subject "Entering a new era in data management" - see his blogpost for a summary of his ideas.


In the afternoon there were joint debates on how to improve implementation of research data management initiatives. Researcher motivation for dataset sharing was extensively debated: this motivation should ideally not just arise from a given funding agency actually requiring those data to be made available, but from the sheer advantages (as summarized by Peter Murray-Rust) that doing so would bring to the research practice and communication ("improving methodology").

An independent debate session was held for discussing how to start developing some kind of research data management infrastructure in those countries where work in this area is presently beginning. These are some recommendations that were put together by the participants in the debate:

- Some workgroup of (not just library-based) IT professionals should be put together for analysing the current infrastructure and the opportunities for launching new initiatives upon potentially reusable pre-existing ones,

- It would be advisable to analyze the researcher behaviour and needs in terms of storing their datasets into international platforms for data sharing (in case they are available for their specific discipline),

- It would be interesting to examine the motivation for data sharing from research groups in different research areas, so that initial efforts to develop data management infrastructures can start working with those areas more willing to share their data (Earth Sciences recurrently showing up when analysing the international perspective),

- Pioneering initiatives for providing services to STM researchers regarding data handling and storing from given Institutional Repositories (such as eSpacio UNED and Digital.CSIC) should be highlighted as a role model to be spread,

- The OpenAIREPlus/SURF Enhanced papers approach could be a good starting point for Institutional Repositories to work at, by finding out which of their presently filed papers have supplementary data attached at the journal site and trying to independently manage those ones,

- A need was detected along the session talks with researchers for a dataset management system at research centres for basic internal organisation purposes. Datasets filed in this internal storage system may or may not be aimed for publication,

- Production and publication of potentially citable datasets should be acknowledged as a relevant scientific contribution for research assessment purposes,

- There are big differences in needs, procedures and required infrastructure regarding data management between Big Science and long-tail science (the greater part actually being groups of three researchers in a lab with specific needs of their own),

- The Library is a potential supplier of know-how on data processing and storing for researchers, and that role should be promoted within the institutions,

- The Spanish e-Research National Network, mostly dealing with Grid and supercomputing initiatives, might be a good workgroup infrastructure for pioneering data management initiatives in Spain,

- There are real collaboration opportunities between the Quixote Project and the research information management infrastruture at the University of Zaragoza (two IRs being currently available, Zaguan at the University and Digital.CSIC at the Spanish Nacional Research Council, CSIC),

- Research staff (mainly PhD students) getting involved in the management and operation of the dataset information management systems (such as Chempound data repository at the University of Cambridge) seems a prerequisite for the success of the data management initiatives

- Due to the specific data features for various research areas, the incipient data management infrastructure available is more developed for the Social Sciences and Humanities than for STM research areas.

A first analysis of data management

As previously mentioned in this blog, the Sonex workgroup is now try to extend its use case scenario analysis on 'Deposit opportunities into repositories' to the realm of research data. A first meeting held at EDINA on Mar 30th served the purpose of drawing a general picture of the data management landscape.

Stress should be put on the fact that the way of handling SSH and STM data may substantially differ. Given the strong IASSIST-attachment of some Sonex members, the workgroup initial approach to data management may therefore be a bit biased towards procedures in the area of Social Science and Humanities. However, attention will be paid as well to specific ways of dealing with STM datasets as the analysis gets fine-tuned.

Moving along the same lines as we did for research articles, we first try to tackle the ACTIONS scope. Data deposit is certainly an issue, but there's more to data-related processes than just deposit. It's also about Access to data and also about Data Notification/Register.

Next we get on to the WHAT and the WHO. Answer to WHAT? is a data set. Previous analysis by Peter Burnhill shows -at least- three different types of research data (see image below).


Dealing mainly with the data file itself, this data type classification is somewhat narrow for the general picture of data management, so Sonex would rather set a new and more generic data classification for answering the question WHAT is there to deposit:

• Metadata record


• Codebook or user guide, where all necessary information is provided to allow for data re-use*


• Raw data or dataset file(s)

* See a DCMI-based description at: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). (2009). Guide to Social Science Data Preparation and Archiving: Best Practice Throughout the Data Life Cycle (4th ed.). Ann Arbor, MI. Section 'Important documentation elements', p. 22

These three elements should ideally be supplied as a single package.

As to the question of WHO performs each data-related operation (Notification-Deposit-Grant access), a handful of running projects within the JISC MRD (phase I) programme should serve to test the different use cases resulting from a double-entry 'Action/What' table as featured below.


Next step as we proceed to further development of this preliminary analysis should be a survey for gathering information on procedures for data handling as carried out in specific JISC MRD projects.

Strategies for research data deposit in ongoing data management projects

  Prior to start performing pattern analysis for research data deposit into (institutional or subject-based) data repositories –whether or not open access– first step by Sonex is to scope ongoing projects dealing with that kind of deposit, as well as already closed projects which supplied relevant guidelines on the subject. A list of projects working on data management follows, with their specific approach on how to deal with actual data deposit as taken from project blogs:


TARDIS (Monash University–Australian National Data Service).
“There is a pressing need for the archival and curation of raw X-ray diffraction data. However, the relatively large size of these datasets has presented challenges for storage in a single worldwide repository. This problem can be avoided by using a federated approach, where each institution or university utilizes its institutional repository”.


ADMIRAL: A JISC-funded data management infrastructure for research across the life sciences.
"The purpose of the ADMIRAL Project is to create a two-tier federated data management infrastructure for use by life science researchers, that will provide services (a) to meet their local data management needs for the collection, digital organization, metadata annotation and controlled sharing of biological datasets; and (b) to provide an easy and secure route for archiving annotated datasets to an institutional repository, The Oxford University Data Store, for long-term preservation and access, complete with assigned Digital Object Identifiers and Creative Commons open access licences".
(See Oxford University Library Services' Databank)


XYZ Project. “The XYZ Project will create a demonstrator of a new workflow for publishing data in support of full-text. The author prepares data for publication (if possible with validation) in a third-party trusted repository before the paper is submitted to a publisher. Our software will manage the deposition, release to reviewers, dis-embargo and for conventional publication or as a data journal. Two Open Access publishers (International Union of Crystallography and BioMed Central) are engaged with the project and will test the new workflow”.
Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes: A demonstrator repository hosted by the IUCr.


FISHnet: Freshwater information sharing network. “This project will allow researchers in multiple academic, governmental and voluntary-sector institutions to share their data. Data will be held securely in a sustainable subject repository which preserves and disseminates multiple datasets as part of the FreshwaterLife.org information portal. Data creators will be able to manage access rights to their content, from Open Access to sharing with trusted colleagues”.


DMBI: Data Management in Bio-Imaging. “The quantity of data generated by modern high-throughput bio-imaging systems presents a significant challenge in both data management and processing. Furthermore, there is no explicit system/way to record the processing algorithms and parameters that are used to produce results. Thus there is no strong link between images, software and results. This projects aims to address these issues”.
Anticipated Outputs and Outcomes: Build a prototype DMBI system around OMERO.


CaiRO: Curating Artistic Research Output. “No prominent subject-based repository exists to act as the custodians of arts practice-as-research data. Where institution provision for data management is in place (for instance, an institutional repository service) the arts researcher-practitioner cannot always rely on an understanding of the special nature of arts research data. More commonly, data is retained in departmental collections, built and maintained by small teams which often include researchers themselves”.


BRIL: Biophysical Repositories in the Lab. “The BRIL project aims to enhance the repository facilities at the Randall Division of Cell and Molecular Biophysics at King’s College London. This will involve:
» Embedding the repository within the researchers’ day-to-day research and experimental practices;
» Integrating the repository into the wider King’s infrastructure”.
Example of KCL “internal” repository: Mutation Testing Repository.


ADS+: Enhancing and Sustaining the Archaeology Data Service digital repository. The project aims to “Increase the sustainability of the ADS, by implementing Fedora (Flexible Extensible Digital Object Repository Architecture). This is a world-leading open source digital repository application which will allow the automation of many ADS curatorial functions, according to the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model (ISO 14721:2003). This will help ensure the long term preservation of all ADS digital archives, as well as making the ADS archival procedures more cost-effective”.


IDMB (Institutional Data Management Blueprint) Project, U. Southampton.
The project’s aims are to provide the University of Southampton with a ten-year roadmap for delivery of a comprehensive data management infrastructure.

[IDMB Recommendations] The data management audit and gap analysis indicates where improvements can be made in the short, medium and long-term to improve data management practices and capabilities at the University. The following preliminary recommendations are put forward for short (one year), medium (one to three years), long (more than three years) term action.
[Short Term (1 year)] Crucial to supporting researchers is the consolidation of data management into a coherent framework that is easy to understand, use, and has a sustainable business model behind it. A number of major recommendations are put forward here for the short-term:
• Create an institutional data repository
• Develop a scalable business model
• One-stop shop for data management advice and guidance


MaDAM: Pilot data management infrastructure for biomedical researchers at University of Manchester.
A pilot infrastructure for Biomedical Researchers at the University of Manchester, which covers data capture, data storage and data curation. This infrastructure comprises procedural support, hardware and software.
[18/03/2010] The development team have built a prototype data management front end which fits a generic set of needs amongst our Life Sciences researchers. It is aimed at being flexible enough to allow researchers themselves to assign attributes (i.e. metadata) to their experiments and datasets for them to be usefully categorised and tagged. The prototype is also entirely dispensable and intended as a catalyst for feedback from our use cases on their specific functionality requirements.


DISC-UK DataShare Project. The DISC-UK DataShare project, led by EDINA National Data Centre and the Edinburgh University Data Library, with partners at the Universities of Southampton and Oxford, has advanced the current provision of repository services for accommodating datasets in the UK.
Key conclusions: 1) Data management motivation is a better bottom-up driver for researchers than data sharing but is not sufficient to create culture change, 2) Data librarians, data managers and data scientists can help bridge communication between repository managers & researchers, 3) Institutional repositories can improve impact of sharing data over the internet.