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An overview of the University of Alberta Health Research Data Repository (HRDR) secure virtual research environment

• Presenter: James Doiron, University of Alberta
• Abstract: Located within the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta, Canada, the Health Research Data Repository (HRDR) is a secure virtual research environment (VRE) developed to support the security, confidentiality, access, and management of health related research data. The HRDR's operational phase commenced in January 2013 and at the time of the writing of this abstract thus far has provided support to over forty-five multi-disciplinary and collaborative health related research projects, both quantitative and qualitative in nature, and with an excess of 125 users across local, national, and international institutions accessing these. Project level services provided by the HRDR includes such things as support for grant writing and ethics submissions; data management planning, guidance and training; comprehensive assessments for resource needs including security, project space set-up, access, and analytic software requirements; detailed user orientations; completion of privacy impact assessments; data acquisitions; and secure file transferring (ingests/extracts). Examples of health related research projects that have benefited from these services will be presented. Additionally, a brief overview of the development and current status of the HRDR, including its policies and procedures, technical infrastructure, and cost recovery model will be discussed.

Improving Access to Documentation on Restricted Labor Market Data

• Presenter: Stephanie Jacobs, Cornell University
• Abstract: The Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research (CISER) and the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) of the German Federal Employment Agency have developed a data service enabling approved researchers to securely access confidential administrative microdata on labor markets. The data files contain detailed information on employment, unemployment benefit receipts, participation in labor market programs and registered job search, and a large number of socio-economic characteristics. Remote access to IAB's Scientific Use Files is available to any researcher approved by IAB, no affiliation with Cornell is required. This presentation demonstrates how researchers can use CED2AR to search through the metadata for IAB's Scientific Use Files (SUF) to locate variables of interest and other documentation essential to formulating and carrying out a research plan.  CED2AR, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and developed by the Cornell Node of the NSF Census Research Network (NCRN), is designed to improve the discover-ability of both public and restricted data. The project is based upon leading metadata standards and ingests data from a variety of sources. The addition of IAB SUF to CED2AR enables researchers to search across multiple labor market data series including the US Census Bureau's LEHD.

Sharing Research Data in Academia

• Presenters: Benedikt Fecher (HIIG & DIW, Berlin); Sascha Friesike (HIIG, Berlin); Marcel Hebing (DIW, Berlin); Stephanie Linek (ZBW, Berlin)
• Abstract: Shared research data in academia is associated with considerable benefits. It makes studies reproducible and enables other researchers to ask new questions based on old data. Thereby data sharing in academia makes research more transparent and fosters innovation. However, curating, archiving and making data available for others is far from being the rationale for good scientific practice. The research project "Data Sharing in Academia" http://data-sharing.org aims to identify factors for efficient data re-use.  After a systematic review of scientific publications on data sharing and a qualitative analysis as part of the SOEP User Survey 2014, we conducted a quantitative survey of researchers from all disciplines (n ~ 1500). In this presentation we present a generic framework for data sharing in academia and the first results from our survey.

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A web-based data management tool for collaborative studies

• Presenters: Dafina Kurti and Alexia Katsanidou, GESIS Leibniz Institute for the Social Sciences
• Abstract: In large-scale collaborative research projects, be it national or cross national data collections, each project phase - study planning, fieldwork, data processing and documentation, and data depositing - require a careful data management and a good coordination among different teams. The web-based data management portal will provide a virtual collaborative work space for researcher teams and different stakeholders of projects. By including modularised management tools, the platform will support research projects according to their requirements, allowing an easy, structured, time saving, and secure communication, workflow and data transfer, no matter in which phase of research life cycle the project is. We will present the final concept of this infrastructure with fully fledged user cases, which was developed based on the evaluation of a) practices in existing data management portals (EVS, ISSP, ESS), b) researcher needs (European Election Study, Eurofund), c) and the recommendations we worked out together with the project managers and principal investigators.

The ch-x "experiment": building experience in good data management practices

• Presenter: Alexandra Stam, Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS)
• Abstract: The Swiss Federal Surveys of Adolescents (ch-x) are long established large-scale surveys conducted amongst 19-21 year old Swiss citizens. They consist of near full coverage of young men drafted to the army (about 40,000), as well as a sample of 2,000 women of the same age. While data service staff at FORS (Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences) are usually occupied with the archiving of national survey data, they won the open competition to lead the 2016-17 ch-x edition. This was a great opportunity for FORS, not only to produce and make available fascinating data on youth mobility for secondary use, but also to strengthen staff expertise in key areas of data management. The ch-x project provides a unique opportunity to reflect on data management throughout the life cycle, whether by challenging accepted best practices or by better understanding pressures that prevent good data management. The presentation will address our data management practices during the first phase of the project, from study conception to the finalization of a lengthy paper questionnaire. Of particular interest is the aspect of documentation, and how our experiences of good - and bad - data management practices can benefit the larger community.

First forays into research data dissemination:  a tale from the Kansas City Fed

• Presenters: San Cannon and Deng Pan, Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City
• Abstract: The Federal Reserve System has a long tradition of doing economic research; each of the 12 Reserve Banks and the Board of Governors have research departments that together publish more than 400 working papers and journal articles annually.  Unfortunately, there has never been a tradition of regularly making the data from those papers publicly available.  A pilot program being undertaken by the Research Division at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City aims to make such data available for research reuse.  Working as a pilot participant for a new dissemination platform, we have had to educate economists, build metadata specifications, recruit contributors, collaborate with technology and legal staff, and coordinate and build coalitions across multiple functions at our institution and others.  This presentation will outline the challenges faced and obstacles overcome as we worked to create the infrastructure and workflow, as well as starting the paradigm shift needed, to make research data publication a regular part of the research life cycle.

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Enhancing Dissemination of Statistical Information in Uganda by Uganda Bureau of Statistics

• Presenter: Winny Akullo, Public Procurement and Disposal of Public Assets Authority
• Abstract: A quantitative study was carried out to investigate ways of enhancing dissemination of statistical information in Uganda. The purpose of the study was to seek ways to enhance the dissemination of statistical information by Uganda Bureau of Statistics. The objectives were: to establish the extent to which statistical information is available in the country; establish the challenges UBOS faces in disseminating statistical information; establish the users' level of satisfaction in accessing statistical information; identify challenges users face in accessing statistical information; and propose strategies for enhancing dissemination of statistical information. 119 users of statistical information participated in this study and 17 UBOS staff were purposely selected because they are charged with dissemination of statistical information. Questionnaires and interviews were used to collect data. Data was analyzed using Microsoft Excel and presented in form of frequencies, figures and tables.  The study established that the UBOS website was one of main channels used for disseminating statistical information, however, it is inaccessible. Worse still, most of the publications disseminated cannot be found on the website information. Among the recommendations, UBOS should use as many available channels in disseminating statistical information in multiple formats and languages and establish regional resource centers. to increase accessibility.

And Data for all

• Presenter: Mark Mitchell, University of Glasgow
• Abstract: This paper will discuss the experiences of the UBDC at the University of Glasgow in supplying "Open" data generated by the City of Glasgow council to public and academic users. Areas covered in this paper will include the standardisation of metadata, data linkage and visualisation services supplied to both communities and will include real world use cases of how the data has been used and how outreach to the public, specifically, was under taken.  In addition to this, the paper will also touch upon the utilisation of additional visualisation techniques such as a fully geo-referenced Minecraft Map of the UK to enable users to interpret data in a different manner from more traditional techniques.  Finally, the paper will cover additional examples of enabling the public to engage with data and how this growing field is key for academic and non-academic study to understand how better can be utilised to improve the understanding of the Urban environment and how individuals interact with it.

Finding space in an Open Data world

• Presenter: Margherita Ceraolo, UK Data Service
• Abstract: There is a global momentum toward open data, with national governments and IGOs such as the IMF, World Bank and UN embracing and promoting open data. As part of the UK Data Service's commitment to the principle that data which are publicly funded should be publicly accessible, the Service offers an increasing range of open data including UK census data, qualitative data, survey data-sets and international macrodata. In the open data environment, there is a need for the Service to continue to adapt and find innovative ways to improve and enhance the users' data experience. What are the benefits of accessing open data via the UK Data Service? With this question in mind, we have begun to explore ways in which we can develop our open data offering for the Social Science community.  This presentation focuses on the international macrodata provision and illustrates our approach to developing the delivery platform, UKDS.Stat, with the aim of making it an invaluable resource for anyone interested in international socio-economic data. It will describe the specific methods we are considering such as providing APIs, visualisation, integrating social media, and acting as brokers to highlight the impact of our data.

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Staff are increasingly engaging in data management activities across the libraries system, including collaborative workgroups focused on data management, liaisons’ work with data producers, and library staff’s own research data needs. We will discuss how to coordinate these diffused activities without stifling flexibility or creativity and how to incorporate these practices into routine work. One challenge facing libraries has been disciplinary differences regarding data management and sharing practices. We will discuss what strategies and methods can address the commonalities and disciplinary differences of researchers’ needs.

Finally, we will discuss our approach to staff and researcher training as our data management services have grown and developed. We use scenario-based exercises, webinars, and user-facing workshops to incorporate this into everyday library work to better serve the research community. Through staff education, we are building capacity to train our researchers through workshops, data management consultations, and comprehensive data management plans.

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