Mary Pickstone, Research Support Librarian
PowerPoint accompaniment to the Researchers Development Programme, PAHC, MMU session on 1st November 2017.
Open Research is the process of sharing your research findings with others, for example through Open Access publications, Open Data or blogging. It increases the visibility and accessibility of your work. This session covers the key areas related to open research, such as how to create a simple data management plan; obtaining informed consent for data sharing from research participants; the anonymisation and storage of sensitive data.
2. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
Mary Pickstone
Research Support Librarian
[With thanks to Sarah May, formerly Research Data
Coordinator, MMU Library]
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
3. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
Q: What is Research Data?
A: Anything that underpins
your research question or
validates your findings
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
4. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
Today’s agenda:
• Research Data Management
• Data Management Planning
• Open Access Publications
• Open Data
• Resources
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
5. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
Today’s agenda:
• Research Data Management
• Data Management Planning
• Open Access Publications
• Open Data
• Resources
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
7. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
Consider:
• Referencing
• File naming/versioning
• Abbreviations
• Storage/Backups
• Metadata
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
8. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
Today’s agenda:
• Research Data Management
• Data Management Planning
• Open Access Publications
• Open Data
• Resources
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
9. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
You have completed your postgraduate study with flying
colours and published a couple of papers to disseminate your
research results.
Your papers have been cited widely in the research literature
by others who have built upon your findings.
However, three years later a researcher has accused you of
having falsified the data.
Scenario:
11. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
Data Management Planning
• Save time and money
• Avoid disasters
• Simple
• Free online tool DMPonline
12. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
Today’s agenda:
• Research Data Management
• Data Management Planning
• Open Access Publications
• Open Data
• Resources
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
13. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
“Open-access (OA) literature
is digital, online, free of
charge, and free of most
copyright and licensing
restrictions”
(from Peter Suber's Open Access Overview, 2004)
14. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
• wider audience and
readership
• increased citation
• earlier impact –articles
cited earlier and more
often
Benefits of Open Access:
15. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
Green
• Accepted manuscript deposited
into an institutional repository
• No charge to publish
• May not be OA immediately
because of publisher embargoes
16. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
Gold
• Final published version can be
deposited into an institutional
repository
• Journals usually charge an Article
Processing Charge (APC) for gold
OA
• Usually no embargo
17. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
Today’s agenda:
• Research Data Management
• Data Management Planning
• Open Access Publications
• Open Data
• Resources
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
18. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
Benefits of Open Data:
• Research is verifiable
• Citation advantage (10-30%)
• Removes unnecessary
replications of experiments
• Can access other researchers’
data
19. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
If you can’t share your data…
• Contact the library
• Outline why in DMP
• Consider sharing metadata
20. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
Choosing a repository
• Store like with like
• Digital Object Identifiers
• Use Re3data.org to identify
suitable home
22. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
Today’s agenda:
• Research Data Management
• Data Management Planning
• Open Access Publications
• Open Data
• Resources
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
23. For more information…
•Consult: http://libguides.mmu.ac.uk/rdm
http://libguides.mmu.ac.uk/openaccess
•Email: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
e-space@mmu.ac.uk
24. PLANNING YOUR RESEARCH
E: data-space@mmu.ac.uk
• Piwowar HA and Vision TJ (2013), Data reuse and the open data citation advantage, PeerJ 1:e175
DOI: 10.7717/peerj.175.
• Piwowar HA, Day, Fridsma DB (2007), Sharing detailed research data is associated with increased citation
rate, PLoS ONE 2(3):e308
DOI: 10.137/journal.pone.0000308.
• Research Councils UK (2016), Concordat on open research data,
http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/documents/documents/concordatonopenresearchdata-pdf/
• Rung J, Brazma A (2013), Reuse of public genome-wide gene expression data, Nature Reviews Genetics
14(2):88-99
DOI: 10.1038/nrg3394.
References
Notes de l'éditeur
How would you define research data?
Data can be literally anything. It can be spreadsheets and graphs (which can also be interesting by the way – look at this one, which outlines the potential tax revenue from legalising drugs in the UK).
But it can also be graffiti, MRI scans, tissue samples, fabric samples, audio-visual recordings, photographs, sketchbooks, notebooks, sculptures, clothes, large population studies, NASA satellite images, pottery fragments.
This tragic documentary will show you a real-life example of what happens when you don’t take steps to preserve your data. While you are watching it, imagine you are Dr Judy Benign.
Good RDM is all about future-proofing: will you know where your files are in 1, 5, 10 years’ time? Will you be able to access them? Will you know what the abbreviations in your data mean?
Surely nobody here would send their only copy of data on a USB stick, but here’s a gentle reminder not to do that.
Don’t do it.
The first and most important re-user of your data will be YOU. Give your future self a gift and make sure that you’re going to be able to:
Find
Understand, and
Access your stuff.
Without intervention, the odds of your data being available decreases by 17% each year following its production. This means that after 20 years, 80% of your data will have disappeared.
Questions:
Do you think you would be able to prove that you had done the work as described? If so, how?What would you need to prove that you haven't falsified the data?What should you have done throughout your research study to be able to prove now that you had done the work as described?
Most research funders now require you to submit a data management plan with any funding bids, but even if your research is not externally funded, create a DMP anyway. It will help you to think through things like:
What kind of data you expect to create
Data-collection methods
How you intend to manage your data during your project
How you will store your data after your project has ended
Any restrictions on sharing your data
DMPs do not have to be lengthy or complicated – the most simple plans are usually the best..
There is a free online tool called DMPonline, which looks like this.
When you log into the website, you’ll be able to see a whole bunch of templates which we made earlier. All you have to do is select your funder (if your research is unfunded or your funder is not listed, I’ve created a standard MMU template for you), and then just work through each of the sections. There is tailored guidance for each question and some example answers.
What you are required to include in your plan will depend on whether your research is funded and who you funder is.
Data management plans are live documents, so will evolve as your project progresses; you may find it useful to keep returning to your plan and updating it as you go along.
Also: don’t have to pay to access articles.
It is the process of making your END OF PROJECT research data available openly to others.
Also, ethically, open data is a fab idea because it means that future researchers will not need to replicate expensive or time-consuming experiments (for example, large population studies) which you have already undertaken.
So researchers with fewer resources (e.g. in developing countries) will be able to build upon your work without the need to obtain large grants.
This goes both ways too – you won’t need to waste time gathering data which other people have already gathered because you will be able to access their results via open data repositories.
Open data doesn’t mean at all that you’ll forfeit your right to exclusive first use of your data – you can embargo your results for a well-defined period of time to give you the opportunity to publish your findings and file any patents.
Most data can be legally and ethically shared if planned from the beginning of your project, for example by ensuring informed consent includes making provisions for data sharing; any personal identifiers are removed and data is fully anonymised before sharing; considering how access to sensitive data can be adequately controlled. However, the reality is that even if you do all of these things, some data cannot and should not be shared.
If you are researching highly sensitive topics (e.g. stuff from the dark web – paedophilia, domestic abuse, FGM), you may not be able to make your data open. Particularly if you have spent a long time building the trust of your participants.
However, if you can’t share your data, this should be noted in your DMP.
In any case, give the research support team a call in the first instance. It may be that we can find a way around your issue, or we can hide your data from public view and just have the metadata visible, so that anyone wanting to access your research data would need to contact you directly and make a case for using it. In this way, you’re still maximising the exposure of your research but you can decide who accesses your stuff.
You’ve planned your research, you’ve backed everything up, you’ve made the excellent decision to make your data open. Now what?
If your research is funded by a UK funding council, they may specify where you have to deposit your data (e.g. NERC-funded projects should deposit data into a NERC data centre).
If you are able to choose where your data is stored, you should consider where your data will have the potential to reach the most people.
There is a free online tool – Re3data.org – which helps you to find the best repository for your data.
Most of the repositories on re3data are free to use and will issue your deposit with a Digital Object Identifier, which is a persistent URL that enables you to link from any outputs.