Abstract
The chapter examines how research data management (RDM) policy and service developed at the University of Edinburgh, comprising three sections. First, the current shape of the service is examined, covering all of the service components and their utility to researchers in turn. Second, the service beginnings and foundations are laid out, such as the 2011 university RDM Policy and how this represented a strong institutional commitment to RDM, and how the first RDM Roadmap addressed policy fulfilment through service rollout. A look at governance, funding, and organisational structure completes this contextual background. Third, strategic directions are explored, focusing on the gaps and achievements of the most recent completed roadmap and a preview of a newly modernised RDM policy and its upcoming implementation.
TopCurrent Shape Of The Service
In trying to avoid acronyms for particular service functions, Edinburgh has found itself coining ever more portmanteau names starting with ‘Data…’ in the tradition of DataShare and DataStore as it has built up its offerings. The wisdom of this route has been questioned internally, not least by seasoned service providers who inadvertently mix up the names themselves, but it has been tricky to find a simple way out of the situation. While trying to avoid throwing these names at newcomers to the service (they are not the titles of service web pages, but rather a plain English description is used for each), the team mostly laughingly embraces the proliferation. There is now DataStore, DataSync, DataShare, DataVault; the Data Safe Haven, which launched in 2019, was closed only two years later, though not because it broke the naming rule, as will be explained under Strategic Directions. Figure 1 is used to represent the service as a whole in promotional materials, indicating the centrality of the researcher’s data regardless of which of the several tools may be utilised.
Figure 1. Researcher’s data at the heart of the service
Key Terms in this Chapter
Open Access [Data] Repository: A digital platform that holds research outputs [research data] and provides free, immediate and permanent access to research results for anyone to use, download and distribute.
Data Management Plan (DMP): A ‘living’ document that outlines how data are to be handled both during a research project, and after the project is complete.
Data or Research Lifecycle: A set of actions taken on a data set or during a research project that corresponds to good practice and enables data reuse.
Research Data Management (RDM): The organisation, storage and preservation of data created during a research project. It covers initial planning, day-to-day processes and long-term archiving and sharing, or deletion.
Electronic Laboratory Notebook (ELN): A software tool that in its most basic form replicates an interface much like a page in a paper lab notebook. Protocols, observations, notes, and other data may be entered and stored.
Roadmap: A strategic plan that defines goals or desired outcomes and includes the major steps or milestones needed to reach it.
Research Data: Digital or analog information that is collected, observed, created, or reused to produce, validate and enrich research findings and conclusions.
Gitlab: Similar to GitHub, available on the web, GitLab is a locally hosted open source repository manager which provides version control and lets teams collaborate on code.
Open Science: Research conducted and published in an intentionally transparent manner. It may include one or more of the following: Open Access publication; open research data; open source software and code; open notebooks; open infrastructure; pre-registration of studies.
Open Research: Sometimes associated with open research methods, however open research is a more inclusive term applying to all disciplines, equivalent to open science.
REST-API: An application programming interface that conforms to the design principles of REST, or representational state transfer architectural style. It allows programmatic access to content of a web system, rather than exclusive reliance on a web interface.