Talk given at the Westminster Higher Education Forum policy conference: Next steps for protecting research integrity in the UK, Monday 9 September 2019

1. The role of open data in
enhancing reproducibility
Westminster Higher Education Forum policy conference:
Next steps for protecting research integrity in the UK
Monday 9 September 2019
Louise Corti
Director, Collections Development and
Producer Relations
UK Data Service

2. • Reproducibility
• Transparency
• Good science
• Helps avoid QRP
• Code
• Data:
• Truthful
• Well documented
• Ethical
• Legal
• Limit embargos on data
• Strict governance e.g. suitable measures and safeguards in place
• Undergrad top senior prf. Dissertaions and their data screen dump

3. Screen dump:
• Open Scienece is not equal to Open Data
• Show a good collection
• Blog Clinical Trials with Cochrane ‘How to share’
• Training Safe Health Researcher (creator/user)

4. Not just open data …high quality open data
• Pathways to access for data held by
UK Data Service
• Gaining ODI Platinum certification for open data
• Running an App Challenge

5. • Builds on 50 years of practice in data curation
• 7000 data collections across social science
spectrum (265 open)
• Supporting the ESRC Data Policy since 1995
• Work with 1000s of data creators using
accumulated tried and tested best practice
• Host the prestigious UK governmental and
academic surveys
• Concordat with Office for National Statistics
UK Data Service – trusted digital repository

6. Managing access to our data holdings
• Download/online access under open
licence without any registrationOpen
• Download/online access to registered
users who agreed to an End User
Licence; possibly for special
conditions, vetted projects etc.
Safeguarded
• Remote or safe room access to
accredited authorised, authenticated,
users whose research proposals and
outputs have been approved
Controlled
Open where possible, closed when necessary

7. Our strategies for enabling safe access
Trusted accredited digital repository
 Informed consent for long-term data sharing
 Protection of identities when promised
 Regulated access where needed
5 SAFES - safe access to data. Fulfils demands
for open science and transparency
Safe data - Safe people - Safe projects –
Safe settings - Safe outputs
https://www.youtube.com/embed/Mln9T52mwj0?platform=hootsuite

8. Successful data ingest
 Standard depositors licences or data sharing
agreements and End User Agreements
 Use robust and explicit quality assessment
techniques
 Use standard deposit metadata and data
description
 Work to an agreed timetable for data publishing
 training and capacity building to safely share
research data

9. Open Innovation project - App Challenge.net
• Open data and crowdsourcing project to generate
innovative uses and outlets for our data
• Created a harmonised open dataset over 2 waves
• European Quality of Life survey
• Data and disclosure control work with data owners
• Engagement with Open Innovation Community
• Platinum certification – Open Data Institute
• Data delivered via an open API
• Ran a App Challenge

10. Platinum certified dataset – a first

11. Blog on ‘quality’ open data requirements

12. An open dataset: whose standards?
• 90 questions – each answer = a URL
- quality, provenance, ethics and legal, documentation,
communication
• Focus on machine readable & actionable metadata
• Massive XML file:
http://doc.ukdataservice.ac.uk/DDI25/7724.xml
• Preservation vs. linked open data challenge
• API data delivery
Developers may NOT read our beautiful
documentation!
Requests to survey API must deliver weighted results

13. #EULIFE entries and winners
Crowdsourced app ideas from developers across the world
• India, Sweden, Serbia, Germany, Finland, Estonia,
Poland, the United Kingdom and New Zealand
• Judges from Google, ODI, RSS, Digital Catapult,
Transport API
Winners: social facts in context
• Quizzes – educational/fun – linked to evidence
• Results linked to contextualised news
• Social or community challenges
• User-friendly visualisation for mobiles

14. UKDS Guidance and training resources

15. Keep connected with us
• Subscribe to UK Data Service list:
www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=UKDATASERVICE
• Follow UK Data Service on Twitter: @UKDataService
• Facebook
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/user/UKDATASERVICE
• corti@essex.ac.uk (Collections Development and Producer
Relations team)