An opportunity was extended at the MRD Programme Phase 2 launch workshop to brainstorm the benefits and evidence thereof of research data management for, in particular, the institution-level projects. Since REDm-MED is not one of these I found myself assisting my colleagues on the University of Bath’s other MRD project: Research360.
Neil Beagrie provided ‘seed corn’ for this event, by way of a summary of benefits collated from those identified by the RDM infrastructure projects; from these we developed a number of ideas which, no doubt, R360 will report in due course.
One idea, however, is of particular interest not only to the Research360 project but to any project which represents research which commonly has external collaborators – such as does the engineering research that REDm-MED hopes to support.
It occurred to us that one class of beneficiary had been overlooked, this being the Industry Collaborator. Although ‘external’ with respect to the institution, it is clear that the some of the benefits of research data management that occur within academia will spill over into industry through the process of collaboration. Likewise, the research data management tools, methods and practice developed for use in academia will be directly adoptable within industry itself. Clearly, since funders are always interested in industry collaboration they will be pleased to see such benefits identified. Here then, under the heading of Benefits for Industry are our first thoughts.
- Greater confidence in sharing data through better, more case-appropriate and more transparent security measures.
- Better access to new data or data hitherto undiscoverable.
- Reduction in data loss as a result of improvements in management throughout the data life cycle.
- A better understanding of good RDM practice.
All these (together with other benefits already identified through the MRD Programme activities) will lead to the high-level benefit of a cultural change in RDM practice.
Suggestions for additions to this list would be welcome.
Many thanks for this, Mansur. I think this is a very important and valuable point. However, the challenge – as always – is not just to identify the potential benefits, but also to understand how, realistically, without excessive diversion of effort, evidence may be gathered to demonstrate that such benefits have been realised.
Relatedly, at the post-IDCC workshop 6 on ‘On the importance of linking: Planning, provenance and citation’ http://www.dcc.ac.uk/events/idcc11/workshops , Sean Barker from BAE Systems spoke very engagingly and provocatively about data management in commercial engineering research. What I took away from his presentation and discussion was that the aerospace industry has established very clear criteria about what data should be kept and why. One suspects it is not so easy in academic research to establish such precise criteria – but one has to try in order to allow effect triage and selection. So there are clearly lessons to be learnt from commercial engineering research as well, and some of these might relate to considerations of why data is retained and for what purpose.