Talk given by Rory Macneil of Research Space on ELNs and Research Data Management at the Dealing with Data Conference, held on 26 August 2014 as part of the launch of the University of Edinburgh's Research Data Management programme.

1. How Electronic Lab Notebooks can
galvanise Research Data Management
Edinburgh University
Dealing with Data Conference
Rory Macneil
Research Space
26 August 2014

2. What we’re going to cover
• Research data management challenges
• Universities: a three pronged response
• The emergence of the institutional ELN for
universities
• How the institutional ELN can galvanise RDM

3. Research data management challenges

4. Traditional research workflow
Publish
results
And the data gets
discarded/lost
Document
research
Collect
data

5. The model under threat
• Why? Data moving from afterthought to centre of value as
technology drives:
– Generation of more data
– Better means of recording and sharing data
• Pressure from:
– Funders demanding
• Data be made public
• Data be preserved
• More efficient and accountable research
– Researchers demanding
• Easier/cheaper access to publications
• Better attribution of credit
– Universities demanding
• Cost reductions
• Access to data to satisfy demands of funders

6. Universities’ response

7. Three (un?)related initiatives
• Initial data capture with data storage facility
• Make data publicly available with data
repository
• Preserve data with data archive
Archive
Storage
Repository

8. Who is carrying these initiatives out?
• IT
• Data librarians
• Research administrators

9. Who are the initiatives ‘for’?
• Funders √√√
• PIs √?
• Researchers ?

10. Will the initiatives be taken up???

11. The emergence of an institutional ELN
for universities

12. Three generations of
ELNs
• 1990s – for Big pharma
• 2000s – for individual labs and researchers
• 2010s – for universities

13. 2010s
The (Third generation)Revolution is coming
2011/12 Wisconsin pilot
“We need an ELN that can be rolled out across the
university”
It has to:
• Be easy to use
• Be platform agnostic
• Support intra- and inter-group collaboration
• Have enterprise capabilities
• Support data publishing and archiving
and . . .
Still be affordable!!!!!!!!!”

14. Three constituencies
• Researchers
– Utility and convenience of paper lab book + online capabilities
– On multiple devices
– File management /integration
• PIs
– Controlled sharing
– Collaboration
– Group management
– File management /integration
• IT, data librarians, research admin, commercialisation office
– Enterprise features: Scalable deployment, Single Sign On
– Multi-group support
– IP protection
– File management /integration
– Archiving and repository integration

15. How the institutional ELN
can galvanise RDM

16. Conduit through the entire research
process

17. Infrastructural glue for RDM
Storage
ELN
Archive Repository

18. Appeals to three key constituencies
• Researchers
• PIs
• IT/Research Admin