EUDAT Porto January 2018

1. www.eudat.eu
EUDAT receives funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 programme - DG CONNECT e-Infrastructures. Contract No. 654065
Practical services for research
data management
Leon du Toit – University of Oslo /
Sigma2

2. OR: where do libraries fit in?

3. Outline
Pose questions
Venture answers
Make recommendations for collaboration between
libraries and e-Infrastructures

4. Asked very crudely…
Why should e-Infrastructures collaborate with libraries?
Why should libraries do the same?

5. D4.5 – joint LIBER/EUDAT libraries investigation
How can libraries position themselves in the data
and computing landscape to offer RDM services to
researchers alongside Research Infrastructures and
e-Infrastructures?
Libraries as both producers and consumers of (or
brokers for) RDM services
Which services can libraries offer?

6. Barriers of adoption
Identified barriers to adoption in T4.1
Lack of awareness
Lacking domain expertise
Better existing offers
Mismatched expectations
Too little trust in service longevity
Lacking understanding of community needs

7. Removing the barriers
Libraries can alleviate some barriers to e-
Infrastructure service adoption:
Playing an outreach function
Being a point of contact
Offering decision support

8. Opportunities for libraries in RDM
Data issue Opportunities
Availability Lower barriers to researchers to make their data available
Integrate datasets into retrieval services
Find-ability Support PIDs
Develop common metadata schemas and common citation practices
Promote use of common standards and tools among researchers
Interpretability Support cross-links between publications and datasets
Help research to understand metadata
Establish and maintain knowledge base about data and their context
Re-usability Curate and preserve datasets
Archive software needed for re-analysis of data
Transparency about data re-use conditions
Cite-ability Establish uniform standards
Support and promote PIDs
Curation/preservation Transparency about curation of submitted data
Promote best practice
Collaborate with data creators
Instruct researchers on discipline-specific practices such as
preservation formats and documentation

9. Complications
Providing RDM services still new to most libraries
Large differences in maturity and capacity among
libraries in different countries
No broad consensus among libraries about their role, or
the meaning of RDM
Unclear how to manage cooperation with Research-
and e-Infrastructures
Need to train staff
RDM not funded from main budget but run via projects

10. Goals
Work towards a common understanding of RDM
among libraries
Need a better understanding of how to manage
cooperation
Anchor RDM activities explicitly in budget processes

11. So where do libraries fit in?

12. Broadly
Outreach
Consulting
Training
Brokering (e.g. B2DROP, B2FIND)
Coordinating
Technical services such as DMPs

13. Conclusion
e-Infrastructures need libraries in order to be
efficient
Libraries need Research- and e-Infrastructures to
position themselves in the RDM landscape
Researchers rely on collaboration between these
actors for a less fragmented landscape