Blog Archives
Open access and the research lifecycle: a guide for researchers
Recent funders’ requirements for open access have presented researchers with both opportunities and challenges: opportunities to re-use and re-purpose published outputs and datasets, and challenges in making one’s own work legally and ethically available to others.
Intended for researchers who wish to engage with the open access agenda, but aren’t entirely sure how best to achieve this, this short guide highlights some of the issues to consider at each stage of the research lifecycle and the tools that are available to support you.
Further information about OA at each of the lifecycle stages can be found in these posts.
Download a copy of the guide: PDF (341 KB); DOCX (110KB) [Last updated 10 August 2016]
Acknowledgement: this guide was developed from work undertaken by Nick Dimmock, Katie Jones and Miggie Pickton as part of the JISC-funded Open to Open Access project. We welcome feedback from both Northampton researchers and our professional colleagues.
ESRC announces new research data policy
Early last week the Economic and Social Research Council published a new research data policy. Aligned with the RCUK Common Principles on Data Sharing, the policy outlines the obligations of ESRC grant holders and their institutions with respect to the collection, management and re-use of research data. A specific requirement is that grant holders should “generate scientifically robust data ready for further re-use” (ESRC).
Data management planning: resources and guides
The creation of a research data management plan (DMP) at the start of a research project is becoming a common requirement. It is increasingly an expectation on the part of funders, sometimes even at the bidding stage, and the University of Northampton’s research data policy and guidance highly recommend it. But what is a DMP and what should it include? Read the rest of this entry
Research data management principles and responsibilities
This morning the University’s Research and Enterprise Committee approved several recommendations put forward by its Research Data Working Group. Among these was the adoption of a new set of research data management (RDM) principles and responsibilities.
The principles are designed to support the University’s research data policy and roadmap, and follow a similar pattern to those in use at a number of other universities. The group hope that these will clarify the university’s expectations of good practice in research data management as well as enabling those bidding for external funding to demonstrate their compliance with funders’ requirements.
The principles and responsibilities are outlined in this document and replicated below.
New FOI exemption for research information
Phil Oakman, the University Records Manager, has just drawn my attention to the new research exemption in the Freedom of Information Act which came into force on 1st October.
The Act states:
“Information obtained in the course of, or derived from, a programme of research is exempt information if:
Data Protection and research data: Q&A
FAQ: How can I be sure that my research does not contravene Data protection law?
JISC Legal have just published a useful set of questions and answers on Data Protection and research data. Beginning with “What is ‘personal data’?”, the 24 questions cover topics such as “What are the basic rules for processing ‘personal data’?”, “What is a Subject Access Request?” and “Can I store my data in the Cloud?”.
If you are working with any type of personal data then these Q&As could be worth a look.
Digital Object Identifiers: what they are and where to find them
FAQ: What is a DOI and how can find out if my work has one?
A Digital Object Identifier, or DOI, uniquely and permanently identifies an object. Although the ‘object’ in theory may be any entity (physical, digital or abstract), in practice the most frequent use of DOI names is to describe the location of electronic journal articles, data sets and other digital documents. To date over 84 million DOI names have been assigned (see DOI Factsheet), each with a set of basic metadata and a pointer to the full content.
The principle behind the DOI system is that clicking on a DOI name will take you straight to the definitive copy of the item, irrespective of whether its web address (URL) has changed.
Free trial: new resources from Web of Knowledge
Until 31 August Thomson Reuters are offering free access to additional databases on Web of Knowledge. They say:
“In addition to active subscriptions to Web of Science, BIOSIS, and Medline, member institutions now have access to:
- Comprehensive research data from international data repositories
- Bibliographic and table of contents information from world-leading scholarly journals and books
- Authoritative research information in all applied life sciences fields like biomedical, animal studies, agriculture and more
- Coverage of applied research in food science, technology, and nutrition
- Bibliographic and citations information from 1,200 core science and engineering journals published in the People’s Republic of China
- A comprehensive index to the global journal and proceedings literature in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities
- Patent and patent citation information”.
Workshop report: Research data management for librarians
Yesterday’s event for Library and Learning Services staff was the third in the series of research data management (RDM) workshops being run by Digital Curation Centre (DCC) staff for the University of Northampton. Our ‘institutional engagement’ with the DCC is part of a sector-wide initiative to enhance the skills of researchers, and those who support them, in RDM.
As a basic introduction, the session started by clarifying what research data are, then covered data management planning, data sharing and the skills required to support these tasks. It concluded with a round-up of progress in RDM activity at Northampton.
Interestingly, some of the most energetic debate focused on the challenges of sharing data.
Launch of the UK Data Service
The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) has just announced the launch of a new national service that will consolidate and incorporate four established data services and websites:
- Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS)
- Census.ac.uk
- Secure Data Service (SDS)
- Survey Question Bank (SQB)
The UK Data Service offers a a single point of access to a wide range of secondary data including large-scale government surveys, international macrodata, business microdata, qualitative studies and census data from 1971 to 2011. Read the rest of this entry
UON Graduate School Blog 