Nov 2 2012

Oh no, not another presentation!

Steve Hitchcock

Continuing, and concluding, our brief ‘oh no’ series of presentations by DataPool at the recent JISC MRD (#jiscmrd) programme update workshop held in Nottingham on 24-25 October.

Projects were invited to volunteer short 10 mins talks at the meeting to fit specified session themes. Given the tripartite approach of DataPool, shown in our ‘oh no’ poster, Wendy White chose to present Policy and Guidance on this occasion (noting that we will be covering the Data Repository aspects – the third tripartite element of the project’s work – at the forthcoming RDMF9 meeting).


Earlier in 2012 the University of Southampton approved a Research Data Management (RDM) policy (slide 2). Clearly it is not enough simply to announce a policy with far-reaching and long-term implications such as this. There has to be support for its implementation, and particularly for those it is aimed at, in this case the university’s researchers and producers of research data. The first step towards this is the RDM Web site (slide 3), with a collection of guidance and briefing notes on how to manage research data effectively, covering issues such as planning, description, sharing, access, storage, and more.

The presentation goes on to outline the principles that shape this guidance and its continuing development, and the contexts in which it is presented across the university.

In the #jiscmrd meeting as whole there were so many presentations like this it wasn’t possible for one person to attend them all. What you got therefore is a selective quickfire update on companion projects in the programme. Even if you couldn’t catch everything, you were certain to learn something.

Oh no, not another presentation! Why would we have thought that?