Seamless flow of content between systems and across institutional boundaries is one of the core – if perhaps utopian – goals of information management. At a basic level, there is within the research community a shared desire and a growing impetus to link publications to the datasets which underpin them, and to sustain these links for the longer-term. But while the publications will generally be held in comparatively stable repositories, data (and metadata) may be created, held in, and accessed via, a variety of different systems.
The increasing obligation to manage and share data in an active way is to the majority of scholars a relatively new (and not always welcome) facet of their roles. Research data managers and support teams may therefore find benefit in tailoring the assistance, tools and guidance they offer their researchers in ways that synchronise smoothly with existing working practices. Furthermore, from a quality and transparency standpoint, workflows and lifecycle models can serve to standardise research processes, underpinning the openness and reproducibility of scholarship.
In recent times the principal focus for research data management protagonists has been upon scientific data, due perhaps to a combination of conspicuous Government or funder declarations with a bias towards the sciences and the very public consciousness of examples of 'big data', notably the output from CERN's Large Hadron Collider.
Examples of technological change designed to assist the producers, users and managers of research data are becoming increasingly prevalent.
Hosted by the University of Southampton, this event took place at the Hilton Southampton hotel.
The programme included speakers from Nature, Elsevier, Dryad, the International Union of Crystallography and Faculty of 1000.
Presentations from RDMF8:
The seventh RDMF workshop took place at the University of Warwick on 2nd and 3rd November 2011.
The theme for the workshop was Incentivising Data Management & Sharing. Presentations and discussions addressed a vibrant range of questions including
The sixth meeting of the Research Data Management Forum (RDMF6) was hosted by the University of Leicester on 5th and 6th May 2011. The theme for the meeting provided an opportunity to explore the principles for data management planning that are set by the major funders, what these mean in practice for researchers and institutions, as well as how plans are assessed, monitored and their agreed outputs measured.
Presentations and discussions comprised
On 13th January 2011 an invited group of researchers, together with senior library, IT and data centre staff, and with representatives from the DCC, RIN and JISC, met to develop a forward strategy for the Research Data Management Forum (RDMF). The purpose of the meeting was to consider the nature and outcome of the first five RDMF events, observe the impact of changes in the research data landscape since November 2007 (when the RDMF was created) and produce a revised strategy for the appropriate continuation of the RDMF.
This was the fifth meeting of the Research Data Management Forum.
Aimed at researchers, digital repository managers, staff from library, information and research organisations, data curators, data centre managers, data scientists, research funding organisations and research networks, the event addressed the topic "Economics of Applying and Sustaining Digital Curation."
Programme and Slides