Digital transformation in the academic world: New service and infrastructure to provide open access to research data
Published on 20. Dezember 2013, 16:29 h
Bielefeld University calls on academics to publish their research data
Whether the coalition agreement of the three ruling political parties, the CDU, CSU, and SPD, the German Research Foundation (DFG), or the European Commission with its new billion Euro research and innovation programmes – the calls for better access to scientific data are prominent. But what do these political demands mean for research at universities? How can data be made available for further analyses beyond the borders of the laboratory? And where can research data to be found online? Bielefeld University is the first higher education institution on Germany to pass a resolution by the Rektorat calling on its academics to make research data easier to find and as accessible as possible to further analysis. And the decisive aspect here is that the coordination centre for research data [Kontaktstelle Forschungsdaten] at Bielefeld University library is delivering an immediate response to this by providing new digital advisory and publication services.
‘Resolution, counselling, service, infrastructure: until now, no other German university has worked as hard as Bielefeld to provide open access and research data management,’ says Professor Dr.-Ing. Gerhard Sagerer, Rektor of Bielefeld University.
Research generates vast amounts of data every day. They come from, for example, surveys, laboratory experiments, or simulations. The further analysis of these data is becoming increasingly more important for the acquisition of new knowledge in the natural sciences, engineering, and the social sciences.
A great deal of effort goes into producing research data, and this makes them into one of the most valuable assets of academic institutions. Nonetheless, even today, it is generally only the results of analysing research data that are made available as a basis for academic statements in publications and not the research data themselves. Therefore, in future, research data should be archived appropriately and made available for the use of other academics after the original researchers have completed and published their work. In recent times, a range of such statements and recommendations have been published both nationally and internationally, including those by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat). The European Commission is also calling for the publication of research data.
The various institutions in the academic system emphasize that systematic research data management has a positive effect on numerous academic fields:
The major research funding sources frequently require researchers to already submit a so-called data management plan for a research project at the proposal stage. Before the research starts, this already defines which measures will be applied to maintain good academic practice with regard to research data. Depending on the specific discipline, these can be such issues as the later archiving or documentation of the generated data, the processing of suitable data and meta-data formats, or the provisions to comply with legal aspects (e.g. data protection).
With its new service, the University library is already applying the data management plan during the early phase of drafting a project. As a result, even before a project starts, researchers are made aware of important aspects of data management. This simultaneously ensures that the data collection will meet the necessary standards to permit a later publication of the data. Publication of the data is often prevented by trivial problems such as the failure to obtain written declarations of consent from research participants. A professional data management plan increases the chances that a research project will gain funding. The University library’s coordination centre for research data [Kontaktstelle Forschungsdaten] also provides an online advisory and documentation service – something that has only been available at North American universities before.
Making data accessible and visible to the academic community
In numerous academic disciplines, data deposition is an integral part of a publication – for example as an important instrument of quality assurance in peer reviews. Nowadays, there are also publication services specializing purely in research data. The Nature Publishing Group will also be launching a so-called data journal in 2014. To gain publication in this journal, the data have to be previously deposited in an archive that has open access.
Bielefeld University is responding to this trend and offering its faculties and institutions – to supplement the inter-university providers in the individual disciplines – an infrastructure for archiving and publishing data. It is linked to Bielefeld University’s central publication server (PUB). This grants research data a similar status to publications in books and journals. The service includes the registration of datasets at DataCite and the attendant issuing of a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). A DOI ensures that publications will be permanently available online – even when a link changes. Meta-data collection and data archiving are also part of the service. Publication in PUB also pays adequate attention to personal and company interests and licensing aspects. The university is simultaneously encouraging its academics to network the data they have already published in discipline-specific research data archives (such as GESIS or Dryad) with PUB in order to achieve the greatest possible visibility of the research output both within and beyond the university.
What’s special about PUB is that literature publications are linked not only to the underlying data but also to the profiles of the academics in the directory of staff and departments.
A first product of the new service is already available. In cooperation with the European Bioinformatics Institute (Cambridge, England), it has already been possible to use more than 600 publications to automatically identify hundreds of thousands of references to datasets of academics at Bielefeld in international journals and make these visible in the university webpages.
Further information is available online at (in German):
http://data.uni-bielefeld.de/de
The Rektorat of Bielefeld University has also drafted a resolution and presented it online (in German):
http://data.uni-bielefeld.de/resolution
Whether the coalition agreement of the three ruling political parties, the CDU, CSU, and SPD, the German Research Foundation (DFG), or the European Commission with its new billion Euro research and innovation programmes – the calls for better access to scientific data are prominent. But what do these political demands mean for research at universities? How can data be made available for further analyses beyond the borders of the laboratory? And where can research data to be found online? Bielefeld University is the first higher education institution on Germany to pass a resolution by the Rektorat calling on its academics to make research data easier to find and as accessible as possible to further analysis. And the decisive aspect here is that the coordination centre for research data [Kontaktstelle Forschungsdaten] at Bielefeld University library is delivering an immediate response to this by providing new digital advisory and publication services.
‘Resolution, counselling, service, infrastructure: until now, no other German university has worked as hard as Bielefeld to provide open access and research data management,’ says Professor Dr.-Ing. Gerhard Sagerer, Rektor of Bielefeld University.
Research generates vast amounts of data every day. They come from, for example, surveys, laboratory experiments, or simulations. The further analysis of these data is becoming increasingly more important for the acquisition of new knowledge in the natural sciences, engineering, and the social sciences.
A great deal of effort goes into producing research data, and this makes them into one of the most valuable assets of academic institutions. Nonetheless, even today, it is generally only the results of analysing research data that are made available as a basis for academic statements in publications and not the research data themselves. Therefore, in future, research data should be archived appropriately and made available for the use of other academics after the original researchers have completed and published their work. In recent times, a range of such statements and recommendations have been published both nationally and internationally, including those by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat). The European Commission is also calling for the publication of research data.
The various institutions in the academic system emphasize that systematic research data management has a positive effect on numerous academic fields:
- It greatly increases the visibility, efficacy, and transparency of research.
- Generating research data requires a lot of labour. Therefore, it should be used for further analyses as frequently as possible.
- Quality criteria and diligence can help stem the flood of data.
- Research data are valuable capital goods of academic institutions, and in the future, their significance may well equal that currently reserved for publications.
The major research funding sources frequently require researchers to already submit a so-called data management plan for a research project at the proposal stage. Before the research starts, this already defines which measures will be applied to maintain good academic practice with regard to research data. Depending on the specific discipline, these can be such issues as the later archiving or documentation of the generated data, the processing of suitable data and meta-data formats, or the provisions to comply with legal aspects (e.g. data protection).
With its new service, the University library is already applying the data management plan during the early phase of drafting a project. As a result, even before a project starts, researchers are made aware of important aspects of data management. This simultaneously ensures that the data collection will meet the necessary standards to permit a later publication of the data. Publication of the data is often prevented by trivial problems such as the failure to obtain written declarations of consent from research participants. A professional data management plan increases the chances that a research project will gain funding. The University library’s coordination centre for research data [Kontaktstelle Forschungsdaten] also provides an online advisory and documentation service – something that has only been available at North American universities before.
Making data accessible and visible to the academic community
In numerous academic disciplines, data deposition is an integral part of a publication – for example as an important instrument of quality assurance in peer reviews. Nowadays, there are also publication services specializing purely in research data. The Nature Publishing Group will also be launching a so-called data journal in 2014. To gain publication in this journal, the data have to be previously deposited in an archive that has open access.
Bielefeld University is responding to this trend and offering its faculties and institutions – to supplement the inter-university providers in the individual disciplines – an infrastructure for archiving and publishing data. It is linked to Bielefeld University’s central publication server (PUB). This grants research data a similar status to publications in books and journals. The service includes the registration of datasets at DataCite and the attendant issuing of a Digital Object Identifier (DOI). A DOI ensures that publications will be permanently available online – even when a link changes. Meta-data collection and data archiving are also part of the service. Publication in PUB also pays adequate attention to personal and company interests and licensing aspects. The university is simultaneously encouraging its academics to network the data they have already published in discipline-specific research data archives (such as GESIS or Dryad) with PUB in order to achieve the greatest possible visibility of the research output both within and beyond the university.
What’s special about PUB is that literature publications are linked not only to the underlying data but also to the profiles of the academics in the directory of staff and departments.
A first product of the new service is already available. In cooperation with the European Bioinformatics Institute (Cambridge, England), it has already been possible to use more than 600 publications to automatically identify hundreds of thousands of references to datasets of academics at Bielefeld in international journals and make these visible in the university webpages.
Further information is available online at (in German):
http://data.uni-bielefeld.de/de
The Rektorat of Bielefeld University has also drafted a resolution and presented it online (in German):
http://data.uni-bielefeld.de/resolution
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