Research funding is evolving and the onus now rests on primary researchers to plan the collection, curation and publication of their data. Adopting thorough data provenance practises, as part the day-to-day research workload, is of mutual benefit to the researcher through recognition of their efforts, to the funder through retention and dissemination of the data resource and to the public who demand more transparency from the research their collective funds support. The limitation to this is experience. Currently co-ordination of resources at local levels within our institutions is lacking and more often than not abilities/techniques/practises are self-taught. Disjointed approaches have led to the current situation whereby most data sets collected during a research project are deemed ‘re-useless’, that is to say they are project-specific and unable to inform or expand on future research questions.
This grant will enable the hosting of a 2-day workshop that will guide researchers on a comprehensive path from (1) developing comprehensive data management plans, (2) data pre-collection planning, (3) meta-data collation, (4) data packaging and (5) data publication. The workshop will consist of integrating hands-on practicals, interspersed with lectures given by both national and international experts in the field.
The central theme of the workshop is ‘Don’t do silent work’. That is to say, we aim to take current activities already employed widely by researchers on a daily basis, and re-purpose them in a way that feeds into emerging data management requirements as set out by funding agencies.
