Research data management at UALJeremy Barraud, Deputy Director, Research Management and Administration

Jess Crilly, Associate Director & Head of Resources, Library Services

• Largest arts and design university in Europe

• Consists of six Colleges: Central Saint Martins; London College of Communication; London College of Fashion; Camberwell, Chelsea, and Wimbledon Colleges of Arts

• Top 30 UK research institution for the quality of research submitted in the REF 2014

About UAL

Image copyright Ivan Jones

• Theory and practice based research

• Research outputs

• The Kultur project

• Research data

• The Kaptur project

• DCC institutional engagement

• Scholarly communications infrastructure

…in the arts?

Image copyright Ivan Jones

Policy aims

• To ensure that staff involved in the research process are aware of their data-related responsibilities

• To ensure that the University meets its obligations with regard to research data management, as defined by research funders

• To make explicit the University’s institutional commitment to good research data management practice

• The policy is supported by a set of procedures and institutional awareness raising and training activities

• “Examples of visual arts research data may include sketchbooks, logbooks, sets of images, video recordings, trials, prototypes, ceramic glazes, found objects and correspondence”

• “..tangible and intangible, digital and physical, heterogeneous and infinite, complex and complicated”

(Kaptur project)

definitions

Image copyright Lucy Rie Archive, Crafts Study Centre, UCA via VADS

Data management challenge

• Researchers need to identify and define data in their processes

• Researchers are not used to packaging and sharing data

• Management of highly diverse content and formats

Image copyright: Enrico Sacchetti

Data management challenge

• New and developing field – no real best practice in place

• Visualising research data

Image copyright Lucy Rie Archive, Crafts Study Centre, UCA via VADS

What we’re doing

• UAL Data repository

• Training

• Data management planning

• Community of Practice

UAL Data Repository

• Holds UAL research data for all research projects where there is a need to store and share the supporting research

• Research Council-funded projects with a Data Management Plan

• Tested with existing, tricky data

• http://researchdata.arts.ac.uk/

ROCOCO project

• ROCOCO (Remote Cooperation and COmmunication) project is the identification of the communication requirements of remotely sited designers working on a shared problem

• Funded by EPSRC

• Data collection took place 1989 to 1992

ROCOCO project

• File formats - as open source as much as possible for wider access and preservation issues

• File sizes – maintaining quality of digital files against file sizes

• Organisation - needs to be logical and cohesive, contextual

• Labelling of individual files

• Legal considerations: IP, copyright, Data Protection, release forms

Training

Data management planning

• Established workflow as part of Data Management Policy

• Workflow covers, pre-award, post-award and post-project stages

• Bespoke support for each application

Community of Practice

Communities of practice are groups whose members share a passion for something they know how to do and who interact regularly to learn how to do it better.

- Etienne Wenger

• Share and disseminate expertise and skills between colleagues across a whole range of subject and professional disciplines

Community of Practice

• Introduction to data management

• Case studies

• Visiting institution: Glasgow School of Art

• Metadata discovery

• File formats

Future developments

• Further repository enhancements to fit the needs of the researchers

• New methods of marking and visualising the data

• Developing best practice in the curation of data

• Educating practice-based researchers on the need to organise and share their data

• JISC Research Data Spring: RDIVA, Sound Matters

Thank you

Research Data Management UAL Data Repository

http://www.arts.ac.uk/Search: ‘research data’

http://researchdata.arts.ac.uk/