JISC DataPool Project

Monday 12 November marked the start of a busy week for DataPool, being the date of the project’s second Steering Group meeting and leading towards a presentation at the 9th meeting of the DCC Research Data Management Forum. In other words, the project was to address two of its key audiences, and had to prepare appropriate documentation for the purpose. We are pleased to share the documentation, starting here with that presented to the Steering Group ahead of its meeting, complementing the record of the first Steering Group meeting.

Collected documents for 2nd Steering Group meeting

Agenda, Steering Group meeting, 12 November 2012
Minutes of previous Steering Group meeting, 31 May 2012
Progress Report by Wendy White, DataPool PI (corrected 20 November 2012)

Introduction to the Progress Report. At the last Steering Group there was a clear emphasis on the importance of supporting cultural change and identifying institutional benefits to improving research data management practice. Recent policy developments from funders have aligned parameters for the accessibility of research data to strengthening requirements for research publications.  There is a focus on benefits- led activity, working with Funders and other external bodies on developing an integrated approach to improving research data management practice. The mid-phase of the project has been informed by this context as we have made progress on the key strands of the project:

• Developing and rolling out service and training models to work with researchers
• Planning an evidence-based programme of support for professional services staff providing these services
• Multidisciplinary engagements
• Investigating requirements for data storage and archiving
• Testing the SharePoint and ePrints data catalogue components

PGR Thesis Model: mapping support from start to award, a work-in-progress, particularly with regard to the role of data in the examiners’ process

Note, two documents provided to the Steering Group were from ongoing work and were for current information rather than this record. These were a draft training needs questionnaire aimed at research support staff, and an update report on a 3D data survey at the University of Southampton.

Among the many issues discussed at the meeting, one noteworthy topic was funding models to support a storage strategy, i.e. once the costs have been mapped, does the funding come from grant funding bid applications or from institutional support infrastructure funds? We are particularly grateful to our external (i.e. outside Southampton) steering group members for the additional perspectives they bring, in this case for the valuable insights on the storage funding issue from research councils and data archives.

Members of the steering group present at the meeting (University of Southampton unless otherwise indicated): Wendy White (Chair, DataPool PI and Head of Scholarly Communication), Philip Nelson (Pro-VC Research), Mark Brown (University Librarian), Helen Snaith (National Oceanography Centre Southampton), Mylene Ployart (Associate Director, Research and Innovation Services), Louise Corti (Associate Director, UK Data Archive), Oz Parchment (iSolutions), Les Carr (Electronics and Computer Science), Simon Cox (Engineering Sciences), Graeme Earl (Humanities), Jeremy Frey (Chemistry), Dorothy Byatt, Steve Hitchcock (DataPool Project Managers). Apologies from: Adam Wheeler (Provost and DVC), Graham Pryor (Associate Director, Digital Curation Centre), Sally Rumsey (Digital Collections Development Manager at The Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford).