Meeting CRESC

Today we visited the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) at the University of Manchester. CRESC is an ESRC funded Research Centre analysing socio-cultural change. Its research projects cover quantitative (longitudinal survey analysis) and qualitative (ethnography, interviewing, audio and visual data).

Three interesting issues emerged from our meeting that create interesting areas to consider. First, data collection is not central to its mission. Outside of qualitative work, their projects tend to generate data from existing data; this produces a lot of "derived" data. This led to an ongoing discussion on the question of what counts as data.

The second issue was that the organisational attitude within CRESC is that it is project governed. This is a reflection of the nature of the centre in working across different disciplines with different research norms and values.

Finally, there is CRESC's own interest in the theme of the "social life of methods". This looks at how methods are themselves an agent of social change. An interest was expressed in following our project closely; effectively studying us. Interesting.

Meeting the TSRC

We travelled to the University of Birmingham for an introductory meeting with the Third Sector Research Centre (TSRC). The TSRC are one of the ESRC research centres we are working with as part of our project.

Overall, it was a positive meeting. The three main topics our discussion covered were intellectual property rights, consent and anonymisation, and administrative organisation.

There is enthusiasm from the TSRC to get a data management plan established and embedded soon. Most of their research is starting now and they want to have good procedures in place and avoid later data problems. Our next task is to work with the TSRC to undertake a data audit in April/May with training taking place in June.

Visit from the DCC

Yesterday we were visited by some representatives from the Digital Curation Centre. Their visit was intended to provide an introduction, guidance and support to data management tools they have developed. The visit covered the Data Audit Framework (DAF), Assessing Institutional Digital Assets (AIDA) and Keeping Research Data Safe 2 (KRDS2). The final hour was devoted to a discussion on where the Data Management Planning for ESRC Research Data Rich Investments project can learn from and contribute to the DCC.

What I took from this meeting was that there are already some very good data management tools in existence. These can be used, refined, and adapted and offered back to the data management community. For example, our remit is to consider data management practices at centre and programme level - effectively looking at cross institutional, multi-research data. This will identify issues that would not exist at departmental level, within institutions, or within single research projects. My sense from this was that there is no generic solution for all scientific and social research.

It was rewarding to meet others in the data management community, and discuss our relationship within that community.

Meetings

Yesterday we had a meeting with the programme manager from JISC and our colleague on the project team from the ESRC. One initial aim was to introduce each other in person, and establish where this project fits into JISC's wider programme on data management and how it contributes to estimating the costing of managing data and promoting a culture of sharing.

It was an interesting and wide-ranging meeting, but the essential points for progress on this project were to sign-off on our project plan and approve our choices for cooperation and the level of involvement with the centres and projects that have expressed an interest in working with us. Following from this, we have already drafted a letter that will be sent by the ESRC to the centres and programme.

The next stage, once that letter has been sent is to set up a meeting with the centres and programmes. As was agreed, we can approach them informally to establish possible dates because the timing is tight. At this meeting we can then work out an memorandum of understanding with the centre or programme and its ESRC case officer, as to the precise nature of cooperation and involvement.

One final, minor but relevant point. Blogging is encouraged as an informal form of monitoring and updating on progress. So, keep watching this space.

Defining the field

This morning we met to narrow the centres and programmes we will work with. The plan was to select one programme and two or three centres with which to work closely and to work to a lesser degrees with the remainder that expressed an interest in cooperation. This may involve interviews with principal investigator and/or a retrospective look at their data management practice. We now have identified some centres and programmes that cover some of the diverse issues in data management such as complex, sensitive, confidential, and commercial data. The next stage is to contact them and begin to sort out a meeting.
Following from this I worked up a spreadsheet to track our progress working with these centres and programme.
Finally for today, I started putting together an interview schedule/questionnaire to discover existing data management practices. It's very much a work in progress, but is based on existing guidance from RELU, Timescapes, Teaching and Learning Resource Programme and our own data management guidance document.

Filling in gaps.

Another week over. But the end of today the project will have its project plan sent to JISC, it outlines our aims and objectives, overall approach and outcomes. Looking at the timetable, we are off to a fast start with plenty to be completed by the end of April. The first objective? Gathering eveidence of existing data management practives in past and present research centres and programmes. So, the next task for me is to fill in some details on ESRC programmes and centres so we can begin to define who, and how, we are going to work with. Things I need to establish are the types of research and data collected, the re-use potential of that data and how they link to some of the priorities we are interested in, be it complex, sensitive, confidential, or commercial data. Finally, seeking to establish what their existing data management and sharing practices.

Positive responses, project plans

Critical to this project is the cooperation of ESRC funded Programmes and Research Centres. Part of the project involves travelling to a few of these programmes or research centres to learn and assess how they go about managing data. So, it's a good sign that having contacted a range of programmes and centres last week, we have had a number of positive responses to our involvement. Of course, the details have to be sorted and official approvals agreed.

Meanwhile, at the end of this month the project needs to submit our budget and plans to JISC. So, I have spent the majority of time so far this week preparing material for submission as well as finally having gained access to edit our website, filling it with content