N8 CIR is pleased to announce the launch of a new N8 RDM Network for professionals working in research data management and related disciplines. The network will bring together expertise and experience from across the N8 to share new ideas, best practice and to learn from the various RDM approaches adopted by different universities.

Rosie Higman

Research Data Manager

The University Library, The University of Sheffield

Learning, adapting and collaborating: providing RDM services at different institutions

The collaborative nature of supporting RDM means that understanding and working with institutional cultures and finding allies is crucial. Rosie will reflect on her experiences providing RDM services at three different research-intensive universities and how their cultures shape the services supporting RDM.

Danielle Owen

Research Data Manager for Core Facilities

Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health at the University of Manchester.

Building RDM best practice into Core Facility workflows

Building RDM best practice into Core Facility workflows Day-to-day research data management is a challenge for many labs, often resulting in duplicated and insufficiently annotated datasets that are stored across multiple locations. FBMH Core Facilities at Manchester have initiated a project to help tackle this problem, with the ambitious goal of shifting the research culture from the ground up. Danielle will describe how Core Facilities are building RDM best practice into their workflows and IT infrastructure - such that research data management happens by default.

Chris Gibson

Research Services Librarian

The University of Manchester Library

Building integrated researcher services with DMP online at The University of Manchester

Chris will talk about how the University of Manchester Library’s Research Services team have worked with colleagues in Information Governance, The Research Governance, Ethics and Integrity Team and Research IT to deliver a collaborative approach to integrating data management plans as a mandatory requirement.

Graham Collins

Research Computing Analyst

Newcastle University

Looking Past the Thin End of the Carrot

At Newcastle University, the Research Data Service’s has focussed on maximising the benefits of good data management practices to individual researchers and projects, especially with regard to data management planning. Necessitated by modest resources as much as anything else, this ‘all carrot, no stick’ approach has proven less effective at pushing service growth beyond our cottage industry beginnings.

We are using the idea of a mandatory DMP policy to think about what could drive and shape the service’s next stages of growth? What kind of policy could work here, what kind of investment would be needed to implement it, and how should we should we make the case for it all, without losing the gains made to date?”