February was a really busy month for research data spring. We started with the workshop at the International Digital Curation Conference (IDCC) and followed on with the sandpit workshop and the much anticipated moment – the judges’ decisions.
A few thoughts on the IDCC workshop are coming out together with David Kernohan’s blog on the Research at Risk workshop, which took place the day before.
The sandpit workshop in Aston
We had two aims with the sandpit workshop: encourage collaboration, discussion, and cross-fertilisation and select those ideas that will have the greatest impact to the sector with the help of the attendees and a panel of 5 judges.
The programme and details document is available on figshare, along with a range of other files uploaded by each group, including Andy Turner’s notes on the workshop. Just search for Research Data Spring as a keyword. There are more details about the project, the sandpit workshop and some thoughts from the delegates on this podcast and some reflections in Research Information. Laurence Horton of the LSE has shared his thoughts on the sandpit and research data spring in a short blog post as well.
During the first day, the idea was to work on the individual project ideas within smaller groups (birds of a feather sessions) to try and identify where some of the projects overlap, where expertise was needed from outside the project group, who else would be interested in the ideas and would take up the solution if it were available.
There was a lot of buzz and a lot of discussion flowing around the ideas. Some of the teams found many overlaps, and others found many organisations who were happy to pilot the solutions. The ideas merged and developed into 27 pitches. Among the highlights, 5 groups managed to collaborate and merge their ideas into a single big project: A consortial approach to building and integrated RDM system – “small and specialist”. I am looking forward to see how this project will progress. The Collaboration for Research Enhancement by Active Metadata, also known as CREAM and Software reuse, repurposing and reproducibility have also been a result of mergers of a range of ideas posted on these topics. It is also worth noting that Unlocking the UK’s thesis data through persistent identifiers have managed to secure a total of 8 partners from their discussion on IdeaScale, IDCC and sandpit workshop.
Below is a summary of the ideas/projects before and after the first day of the sandpit and the number of stars they got from the attendees.
*Click here to see the pitch (embedded in a figshare fileset)
Funded projects
And finally, the very much anticipated list of projects. I wanted to thank all the judges who have had a very intense day on the Friday of the sandpit, dedicating focus to each and every pitch, while jotting down notes on the scoring spreadsheet. I would also like to thank all the project teams, the experts and other delegates who dedicated their time, effort and enthusiasm to participate in this event. We hope that all the project teams found the event useful and we wish those that were not selected in this round success in pursuing other means of pursing their ideas and we are happy to help with any advice and guidance.
(Drumroll…) And the ones going to the next phase are:
| Project Name | Team, collaborators, interest |
| A consortial approach to building and integrated RDM system – “small and specialist” | CRESTUniversity for the Creative ArtsULCC
Leeds Trinity University Arkivum |
| Clipper: enhancing time based media for research | City of Glasgow CollegeThe Open UniversityReachWill Ltd. |
| Collaboration for Research Enhancement by Active Metadata | University of SouthamptonNinebyNine STFCUniversity of Edinburgh
University of the Arts London |
| Develop a DataVault | University of EdinburghUniversity of Manchester |
| DMAOnline – RDM Administration Analytics | Interest from: University of Birmingham, Lincoln, Nottingham, St AndrewsSecondary guidance: University of Leicester, DCC |
| Enabling complex analysis of large scale digital collections | British LibraryUCLInterest from: SSI, DataCite, Casa |
| Extending OPD to cover RDM | DCCUniversity of Southampton |
| Filling the digital preservation gap | University of HullUniversity of YorkWith help from: In house developers, Artefactual Systems
Other supporters: Universities of Warwick, Strathclyde, Nottingham, St Andrews, Lancaster, ULCC and Arkivum |
| Giving researchers credit for their data | University of OxfordOxford University ResearchCEDA (Centre for Environmental Data Archive)
F1000Research Ubiquity Press Geophysical Data Journal Wiley |
| Methods for accessing sensitive data – AMASED | University of BristolLondon Metropolitan UniversityContent Mine
British Library F1000 Research |
| Open Source Database-as-a-service with Data Publishing | University of OxfordInterest from: University of Bristol, University of St Andrews, London School of Economics, University of Manchester, University of Leicester |
| Software reuse, repurposing and reproducibility | University of St AndrewsSTFCSoftPres
SCAPE |
| Sound matters: a framework for use and reuse of sound | CRiSAP UALPossible Collaborators: CLIPPER Project, British Library |
| Streamlining deposit: OJS to repository plugin | City University LondonUbiquity Press |
| Unlocking the UK’s thesis data through persistent identifiers | University of East LondonUniversity of SouthamptonUniversity of St Andrews
London School of Economics University of Northampton University of the Arts London University of Bristol EThOS, British Library |
| Use semantic desktop to capture contextual research data | University of the Arts LondonSemiodesk |
Coming up next
We set up a JiscMail list Jisc-researchdataspring to share and post any announcements related to the events, suggestions, comments and discussions around the projects. It is open for anyone interested in keeping up with research data spring.
Right now, the grant letters are on their way to the successful teams and updates will be posted here, as well as on the JiscMail list.
Sandpit 2 will be held in late June/early July 2015.
Thank you everyone, we would have not been able to have such a great experience in this first phase of the workshop if it wasn’t for you, your enthusiasm and excellent ideas!