Unravelling the data lifecycle

Recent work carried out in Australia with New Zealand participation has created a more detailed way to identify the implementation challenges of research data management (a component of the Institutional Underpinnings program of the ARDC). Depicted here as “unravelling” the life cycle diagram, the challenges exposed relate to the nature of the decisions that drive data curation, retention, and disposal in each life cycle stage.

As data volumes rise, it is vital that curation effort focuses on the most important data sets. Noting that these can be expected to be distributed across all New Zealand’s research performing institutions, a commonality of approach will be important. This BoF aims to bring the community together and focus the discussion and activities around the data culture needed to realise a collective outcome. Brief presentations will be provided of some of the analysis leading to this way of thinking.

Questions to be raised include:

• Data stewardship - what is the goal?
• What should a data steward know about their data?
• How can we support each other to adopt FAIR and CARE principles?

ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Roger Lins

Rhys Francis

David Jung is a project manager at UNSW and has provided technical, policy, and strategic advice on research data management to researchers and administrators alike in a number of previous roles. He recently led two ARDC-funded institutional underpinnings extension projects that aimed to develop a taxonomy for institutional research data reporting and aligned best practice guidelines for safe and effective research data retention and disposal.

Ai-Lin Soo has a background in Commerce, with a focus on sustainability and BioMedical Science and has been with the Monash eResearch Centre (www.monash.edu/researchinfrastructure/eresearch). Ai-Lin is involved in a number of cross cutting initiatives within the Centre, applying her project management skills to a diverse range of projects from marketing and communications to research data management. Ai-Lin is also heavily involved in the Research Data Culture Conversation (www.researchdataculture.org) and manages the Monash University response to the ARDC Data Retention and Institutional Underpinnings programmes.

Luc Betbeder-Matibet is a nationally recognised subject matter expert in eResearch, University Research Data Management and shared computational infrastructure services for researchers. He has held director-level roles for 15 years in ICT and eResearch. Luc is the Director Research Technology Services at UNSW, a shared services function that he established which is responsible Research Computing and Research Data. He is an Adjunct in UNSW Faculty of Medicine Centre for Big Data and has been a Visiting Scientist with the Visual Analytics Team in CSIRO Data61. Recently Luc has been working with colleagues to count how much Research Data there actually is in Australia.

Claire Rye is a Product Manager at New Zealand eScience Infrastructure (NeSI) based out of the University of Auckland. She is responsible for the National Data Transfer Service and works across the Aotearoa Genomics Data Repository and Rakeiora Pathfinder projects and looking at research data management and data lifecycle more generally across NeSI. Claire holds a PhD in organic chemistry and has spent the last 11 years working in the UK in a variety of research settings.

Nick Jones is NeSI’s founding Director, having established and led NeSI alongside a team of colleagues and peers since inception in mid-2011. Nick is responsible for NeSI’s partnerships, strategic directions and performance, bringing together a talented and diverse array of people, and their institutions and interests. Nick is a founding member of the Aotearoa New Zealand Committee on Data in Research, and developed the eResearch Ecosystem Map, a common framework for eResearch capability and investment nationally and institutionally.

For more information about eResearch NZ / eRangahau Aotearoa, visit:
https://eresearchnz.co.nz/