Data Curation

Data Fest is coming in February

Since Love Data Week and Endangered Data Week both happen in February, we thought we’d use this month to showcase some of the great data-related services and resources we have to offer here at Snell. We’re calling it Data Fest, and you’re invited!     Here’s a taste of what we have planned: → Stop by and lend a hand at our Citizen Science: Health Hackathon → Make friends with your command line at our Intro to the Unix Shell workshop → Learn how to create impressive charts & data visualizations at our workshops on Tableau and free web-based tools   And more! Check out the full lineup and register here: http://bit.ly/snelldatafest18   

Data Management and Curation at Northeastern

Northeastern University Libraries is embarking on a program to help researchers at the University write data management plans in grant applications, help people store and create metadata for their research, and, eventually, help them publish their datasets with all the appropriate metadata to the appropriate audiences. What is the use of this? In a lot of ways, it is a way to make research more efficient, and thus, in the long run, cheaper. Researchers regularly create data from experiments and observations. In an academic environment, they then use that data to test hypotheses and generate new ideas. The results are published, and humanity gains new knowledge. (I realize that I’m simplifying the process considerably.) But what happens to the data that had been collected? The researchers that create it obviously use it for further inquiries, but much of the time, the data is stored somewhere and forgotten. People have been slowly realizing that there may be more knowledge that can be combed out of the “old” data. Perhaps it can be combined with data from another source, or multiple other sources, and new questions can be answered using it. In fact, funding agencies, such as the National Science Foundation, are starting to require that grant applications include a Data Management Plan, which should explain how the researchers on the grant will:
share with other researchers, at no more than incremental cost and within a reasonable time, the primary data, samples, physical collections and other supporting materials created or gathered in the course of work under NSF grants.
I will be working with the staff at Northeastern University Libraries and the researchers at Northeastern to make sure that Northeastern can become a leader in data management and curation.

The science of being a grad student

At the beginning of this semester, I had the opportunity to meet with several groups of new graduate students in the sciences. I quickly realized that they didn’t easily fall into either of my preconceived categories of “students” or “faculty.” Sure, grad students pay tuition like undergrads, but they often also work as research or teaching assistants, and especially in the sciences they’ll have the chance to gain experience publishing their research in scholarly journals. It’s been a while since I was a grad student myself (and never in the sciences), so I decided to do a little, well, research on the topic. Quite by coincidence, I found a recently published book in the Hub that any grad student (or faculty member who works with grad students) would find helpful: ⇒ The Art of Being a Scientist: A Guide for Graduate Students and Their Mentors, by Roel Snieder and Ken Larner (Cambridge University Press, 2009) It’s geared towards grad students and faculty in the sciences, but chapters on time management, the ethics of research, and “turning challenges into opportunities” will be of interest to anyone getting started in the world of research and publishing. Over the summer I read a book called Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre — it’s a collection of Goldacre’s columns from The Guardian newspaper in Great Britain.* He’s a doctor who works for the National Health Service there, and has made quite a name for himself debunking various health claims from drug companies, advertising agencies, etc. It really showed me that skepticism is a good thing. He bases his writing on the concept of evidence-based medicine (also called evidence-based practice), which promotes the use of the scientific method to guide clinical decision-making. Goldacre points out in many of his columns that in fact evidence is sometimes ignored in order to promote a claim that is not supported by, for example, drug trials. He also cited this book as a classic in the field: ⇒ How to Read a Paper: The Basics of Evidence Based Medicine, by Trisha Greenhalgh (BMJ Publishing Group, 1997) Another book on the topic in our collection is: ⇒ Studying a Study and Testing a Test: How to Read the Medical Evidence, by Richard K. Riegelman (5th ed., Lippincott Williams and Wilkins, 2005). (Also available as an e-book!) I liked the second one for its inclusion of “flaw-catching exercises” designed to make readers think about why a certain statement is not supported by the example evidence. I’m not a scientist, but I still found reading about evidence-based practice really interesting! As Scholarly Communication Librarian, I meet with a lot of faculty who are active in researching and publishing, but until this semester I had not had the pleasure of meeting many graduate students. At the library, we are especially interested in starting to work with researchers at all levels to support data management needs — you’ll see more about this in the months to come. I look forward to meeting more of you in the future and supporting your research and publishing needs as well! * We don’t own Bad Science at this library but you can borrow it through NExpress!

Open Access Week: Data Management and Sharing

OA Week Today I’m blogging from UMass Amherst, where I came to attend three events being held as part of Open Access Week. I just came from the second event, which was a focus group with grad students on their data management needs. Data management is of increasing interest on university campuses — researchers are generating more data than ever before, and while we’re able to store more information in smaller physical spaces, it still seems like a challenge to keep up with the demand for more space. What I learned from the students at this session is that different disciplines have their own ways of managing data, and methods for doing so might differ between grad students and their advisors within a single lab or research group. They want their data to be accessible from anywhere in the world, and many find their current arrangements for managing and sharing data to be unsatisfactory. (E-mailing data to themselves or each other or transferring data on USB sticks is common.) And yes — they want more! space! One grad student estimated that his lab produces multiple terabytes of data on a weekly basis. Students are also concerned about the NSF’s new requirement that a data management plan be included in grant applications. And they would love someone to come and consult with their departments on data management. Many of them would be happy to share their raw data with other researchers. Does any of this sound familiar? Do you have other, different concerns about your data? At Snell, we are very interested in talking with you and your research colleagues, whether you are students or faculty. Attending this focus group really emphasized to me that we need to begin reaching out to researchers on campus to learn what your needs are. Feel free to get in touch with me about your data management concerns!