Research data management

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For SUSPLACE 20 April 2016

Hugo Besemer www.slideshare.net/hugobesemer

Data management planning – for whom?

For yourself – to make it easier to find things back and know what they are

For your colleagues For the SUSPLACE program For your funder

What should be in the plan?

What data should you store?

Raw data Final data Papers

but also Intermediate data Drafts of papers Methods Equipment and materials Research notes ...

What do you choose to store? Everything you need to be able to do your work Everything your colleagues need to do their work Everything required by your funding organisation Everything required by your journal Everything necessary to reproduce your results

Short term storage – what are the issues?

Space Access

●From where?●By who?

Versioning Backups Finding it again!

Storage: where?

Storage solutions

Advantages Disadvantages Suitable for

Personal computer /laptop

• Always available• Portable

• What if it breaks/is stolen?

• What if you are ill or away?

Temporary storage

Network driveManaged file servers

• Regularly backed up and maintained

• Stored securely• Stored centrally

• Costs• May not be

accessible from everywhere/by everyone

Master copy (if enough space is provided)

External storage devices – USB, flash etc.

• Low cost• Portable

• Easily damaged or lost

• Insecure

Temporary storage

Cloud services – Dropbox, Figshare, SkyDrive etc.

• Automatic sync (some services)

• Easy access

• Is it secure?• No control over

backup procedure

Data sharing

Question: are there agreements for SUSPLACE?

Storage during research: basic tips Versioning

●use a file in one (online) location as the “master”, and do all your modifications and processing on copies of that master

●When you have consolidated your changes and do not want to lose them, replace the master file by the consolidated file

●Keep track of ‘milestone files’

Folder structure

DO: Stabile and scalable Interaction with filenames. Folder? Or element in

filename?

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Project_Files Pictures

??UB_users_mktproj_01032015.tif =Projectfile (picture)

Project_Files

Pictures

UB_users_mktproj_20150103.tif =Projectfile (picture)

taken from: Data management Workshop For Researchers by Tessa Pronk (Utrecht University Library)

If you use for example Atlas.ti or NVIVO for qualitative data, it takes care of some of this

Folder structure

DO: Stabile and scalable Interaction with filenames. Folder? Or element in

filename?

DON'T: Too flat or deep structure Folders with overlapping content

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taken from: Data management Workshop For Researchers by Tessa Pronk (Utrecht University Library)

Example: folder structure

11From: ‘Setting up an Organised Folder Structure for Research Projects’ Posted June 4, 2014 Blog by Nikola Vukovic

don't forget the folder with your literature (and Endnote or Mendeley libraries)!

Filename conventions

DO: Note in a separate document what element codes in your

filename mean Keep short and relevant, about 25 characters. Go from generic to specific (handy with sorting and

finding) Use ‘_’ or ‘-’

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Use fixed elements in your filename: Version number, date, description content, project number, name researcher/team.

taken from: Data management Workshop For Researchers by Tessa Pronk (Utrecht University Library)

How would you name the file?

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?a. MA_NTC023_20141031.xls

b. MA@NTC#23~20141031.xls

c. MicroArrayData_NetherlandsToxicogenomicsCentreProject023_20141031.xls

d. microarrayntc02320141031.xls

e. MA_NTC023_31102014.xls

f. MA/NTC/Project23/OCT31st/data.xls

Filename conventions

DO: Note in a separate document what element codes in your

filename mean Keep short and relevant, about 25 characters. Go from generic to specific (handy with sorting and

finding) Use ‘_’ or ‘-’

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Use fixed elements in your filename: Version number, date, description content, project number, name researcher/team.

taken from: Data management Workshop For Researchers by Tessa Pronk (Utrecht University Library)

Filename conventions

DON'T: Use special characters (&%$#) or points or whitespace. Name your files 'new_version' 'newer_version',

'newest_version'. Duplicate files in different folders Trust computer-metadata with your file

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TIP: In most operating systems ‘Batch renaming software’ exist

very good vs. less good

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?a. MA_NTC023_20141031.xls

b. MA@NTC#23~20141031.xls

c. MicroArrayData_NetherlandsToxicogenomicsCentreProject023_20141031.xls

d. microarrayntc02320141031.xls

e. MA_NTC023_31102014.xls

f. MA/NTC/Project23/OCT31st/data.xls

Long term or ..... For WUR: contact our data librarian (

datamanagement.support@wur.nl)●support with storage in DANS-EASY and 3TU●advice on other repositories

find a suitable discipline-specific repository●provided by journal (e.g. Dryad)●search re3data.org

use a free generic repository●figshare●Mendeley.Data●Harvard Dataverse●Zenodo

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Help! I need a DOI for my manuscript!

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documentation

document your dataset on a project, file and parameter level

add a readme file●describe the data that each file contains;●define column headings and row labels, data codes

(including missing data) and measurement units for tabular data;

● list whether associated data files are available and if so, where they're available;

● list whom to contact with questions describe the data collection process/method in a

methodology file (or refer to the publication)19

more info

For yourself

For data processing and analysis Help in writing reports and papers Reference for the future

●Will you still understand it in 2 months, 6 months, 2 years..?

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Thank you for your participation!

More info?

Go to: Wageningen UR Data Management Support HubOr contact us via: datamanagement.support@wur.nl

And say your from WUR-coordinated SUSPLACE

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Data documentation

Context is essential!

The context comes from you!

Example

Study to examine the effects of diet on health- Conducted over 3 years by 3 researchers – Peter, Lisa and Anna

There are many ways to organise the data. We will look at three:- By researcher- By year- By activity

Example

It is now the summer holidays in 2016. Peter and Anna are on holiday, and Lisa has received some urgent questions from the reviewers. They need to know: the procedure used to produce the high protein diet which bureau measured the data what sort of preprocessing was carried out on the data.

Organisation by year/researcher

Need to know what was done when or by who

Example – Organising by activity

Easy to navigate through, for each question you quickly find the right folder - even if you had no prior knowledge.

Example – Organising by activity

Still need to do quite a lot of detective work to find the information – have to rely on good names, guesswork, and ...

...read through the content of the files.

Descriptions and links

Enter a brief description for each activity (folder) It may help to identify types of files (e.g. dataset,

procedure, sample, document) Linking to items produced in other activities allows you

to:● follow the workflow ● reuse items● avoid problems due to multiple copies

Example – Organising by activity plus descriptions and links

Easy to navigate through, for each question you quickly find the right folder - even if you had no prior knowledge.

Descriptions help you to find and understand the data

Links make the whole process traceable