This report provides an analysis of the usage and impact of a number of research data centres, representing a cross-section of research disciplines in the UK.

The study aimed to demonstrate the importance, relevance and benefits of effective sharing and curation of research data for the UK research community. It looked at the long-term usage and impact of data curated by a cross-disciplinary selection of established data centres.

Using quantitative and qualitative approaches, the study gathered evidence on the extent data centres have been useful to the research community. As part of a wider body of work, this evidence will help to build a case for improving data sharing practice in the UK.

The RIN and the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) commissioned Technopolis Ltd to undertake this work.

Attachments

Information handling is used here to encompass all pre-existing and new information sourced, organised, stored, shared and disseminated during a collaborative research project.

This study was commisioned by the RIN and British Library to provide empirical evidence of the challengers faced by researchers working in collaborations through the examination of five case-studies, all involving at least one HEI and external partners and selected to reflect a range of variables. The case studies comprised:

• a large multinational collaboration involving pharmaceutical companies and HEIs;
• a large European co-ordinated action between HEIs and public bodies involved with end-of-life care;
• a medium sized UK based project on material and engineering involving HEIs and a mix of commercial partners including large multinational industrial organisations, SME manufacturers and University spin-outs;
• a small knowledge transfer partnership, developing a software and hardware package for use in residential care, involving one SME and on HEI;
• and a small exploratory collaboration involving a mix of commerical and third sector organisations, and a HEI

The case studies were preceded by a literatur review and followed by four workshops that tested and built on findings to rach a number or recommendations for improved practice.

A copy of the collaborative report can be found by clicking here

Visits to St Andrews University and the University of Glasgow proved invaluable in helping to identify the needs of the stakeholders from the perspective of researchers who have existing datasets, researchers who may want to find existing datasets, and also from the perspective of those who have a responsibility for datasets within their own organisations.

An initial discussion with Gerry Lawson was also helpful in helping to identify what the research councils/funding bodies need and what their main drivers are.

Metadata standards that support a variety of disciplines and some classification schemes have been examined. It appears that there is some overlap in the terminology used in the metadata standards from different disciplines – this may, potentially, prove beneficial.

A mapping exercise of some (selected) standards to potential CERIF entities has been carried out with a secondary aim of identifying a minimum subset of terms for classification, administration and discovery. The mapping exercise supports the overlap of terminology and shows where, potentially, there are existing CERIF entities to support metadata.

Semantics is an area where there has been some initial discussion with Brigitte Jorg but still needs further consideration and discussion.

Work is continuing on the entity mapping and the ontology.

We need to clarify support for review of licence terms and recording of licences. 

We will be looking at how we manage licencing in of data e.g. where a researcher wants to use data owned by a third party to do some research.  We have seen example agreements which state that any research results emerging from use of the data become the Intellectual Property of the third party.  We need to make sure there is clear advice to staff as to what to look out for when obtaining data from third parties.

The Digital Curation Centre provides some advice on licencing out data at:

http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/how-guides/license-research-data

We will be convening a working group early 2012 to start work on formal policies for Data Management and Storage as well as reviewing and augmenting the support we already have in place.

We hope to both learn from others who who have done work on policies and share our views with the community.

We had to choose three key benefits (from quite a large list) for the research community which we agreed were as follows:-

• Integrated thinking around research data management
• Enhanced finding and organising of data
• Greater consistency and standards between projects to enable data re-use

These benefits can be assessed using the following metrics:-

Enhanced finding and organising of data:-

• number of research dataset publications generated
• increased visibility of research through data citation
• number of data deposits within repository
• number of downloads of datasets from repository
• number of citations to datasets in research articles

Integrated thinking around research data management:-

• Average time saved in research data management and grant proposal activities
• Results of user feedback forms

Greater consistency and standards between projects to enable data re-use

• Number of datasets deposited with enhanced metadata

Some of the metrics are more difficult to measure than others, and that will be one of the challenges for C4D.